Hairy Dawg’s Origin Story: An Oral History

Hairy Dawg is one of the most iconic mascots roaming college football’s sidelines. He’s so ingrained in the culture of Georgia football that most Dawgs fans can’t envision a time when he wasn’t posing for pictures throughout Sanford Stadium or beckoning Georgia fans to get loud.

The 2021 Georgia football season will mark Hairy’s 40th Between The Hedges. The story of how he came to be is one that deserves telling.

And who better to tell it than two of the people who had front row seats to Hairy’s origin story – Tom Sapp and Dr. Stan Beecham.

(Quotes used in this article come from Episode 7 and Episode 11 of The Saturday In Athens Podcast)

Tom Sapp – Creator of Hairy Dawg

I graduated from Georgia in 1969. I was in the art school, a graphic design major. One of the interesting projects I got while I was in school was the business fraternity called me.

They asked me to do a poster for them to sell. I did this poster for ‘em and they paid me $100 and I thought why do I even need to graduate? I have a $100! And really, that was the first sketch of what became Hairy Dawg. I actually still have the original artwork with that poster in my files. And I kind of set it aside, until 1980.

Dr. Stan Beecham – the Original Hairy Dawg

My sophomore year at Georgia, I was a cheerleader. That was the first year we had a JV squad. And that was also the year that we played Notre Dame for the national championship and won.

During the Christmas break, when the team was still in Athens preparing for the game. I got a call from Coach Mike Castronis, who was the cheerleading sponsor. He said some guys in Atlanta had developed this Hairy Dawg costume and they needed somebody to wear it.

Tom Sapp

In 1980, I was working in the advertising business as an art director/creative director and of course, we had a pretty good freshman named Herschel Walker.

And I felt like we needed a tougher mascot to reflect the attitude of that team, the whole Junkyard Dog theme and everything that was going on.

I always had friends over for the Florida game and that year one particular friend, Alan Matthews, was watching with me. We were watching this new Gator mascot next to what was really a pretty bad Georgia mascot.

I think its name was Fluffie – this grey, mushroom-headed dog. It didn’t look like a bulldog. The person wearing it didn’t act like a bulldog.

Stan Beecham

The mascot we had at the time was just terrible. It just had this little outfit that was like a one-piece jumper, and then had this foam dog head that you put on. It was really pretty pathetic.

Tom Sapp

And this Gator was a pretty doggone good costume for that day and time, it was moving and shaking.

Alan said to me, you need to have a dog down there next year that will intimidate that damn Gator. I said, why not? Let’s do it. And that kind of started the whole ball rolling to get what became hairy dawg.