Georgia football countdown to kickoff: 56 days to go
The 2018 Georgia football season begins in 56 days.
It’s Saturday, which means we’re now just eight weeks away from the beginning of the 2018 season. Just 56 days separate us from the long awaited game with Austin Peay at Sanford Stadium.
And in honor of there only being 56 days left on our countdown, Dawn of the Dawg is going back to 1920, the first true championship season for Georgia football. But more specifically, the 56-0 win over Florida in Athens on November 13.
Georgia’s 1920 team already isn’t talked about enough. That team finished the year 8-0-1 overall to win the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Association Championship. They outscored opponents 250-17. The defense had seven shutouts. Unfortunately, one of those shutouts was a 0-0 tie with Virginia that kept Georgia from a perfect season. The only other close game was Georgia’s 21-14 win over Alabama.
Going into the game with Florida, Georgia’s offense needed to bounce back from the tie with Virginia. Their record going into the game was 5-0-1 and the defense had only allowed three points.
This wasn’t even a terrible Florida team that Georgia played, although they’re hard to judge. Their record entering Athens was 5-1, and they had only allowed 14 points. But one win was by forfeit Their best victory was against Mercer who finished last in the SIAA. The one loss they suffered came against Tulane who ended the 1920 season undefeated in in SIAA games. Florida finished the season 6-3, but that was a weak record.
The game
“The Gators were just simply outclassed in every department of the game,” said in the November 19, 1920 edition of the Red and Black newspaper. “Frankly, the Georgia fans were disappointed in the kind of game she [Florida] put up Saturday.”
Clearly Florida didn’t impress the Red and Black or the fans in 1920. Georgia slaughtered Florida in one of the more lopsided games in series history. They named Sheldon Fitts the player of the game calling him “the sensational star.”
“This man ran circles around the Florida bunch,” said in the Red and Black. “He was a veteran in his bucking and plunging. [James] Cheeves, who was out of this game because of injuries, had his place well filled for the occasion by Fitts.”
The paper even pointed out how great the reserve players fared against Florida. Thier perfoemance allowed coach H.J. Stegeman to keep his starters rested for the Alabama game the following week. Of course they took that rest and applied it to a hard fought victory over Bama.
The Red and Black chose not to go into too much detail on the game, likely because with a 56-0 score, they could have just released the scoring summary. The Atlanta Constitution had more to say about the contest. They noted how Florida’s line was one of the heaviest to play on Sanford Field with an average weight of 190 pounds. That shows how much the sport has changed in 100 years.
Next: Georgia football's former rivals from the early 1900's
The starters accounted for 35 first half points before Stegeman pulled them from the game. Six different Bulldogs scored a touchdown that day against Florida. Fitts scored two, as did Bohren (No first name found, not even in the All-Time Letterman section of the media guide). Paige Bennett, Hugh Vinson Hartley, Roy Echols, and Dave Collings scored one touchdown each.