Hairy Dawg’s Origin Story: An Oral History

Tom Sapp – Creator of Hairy Dawg

It was funny because we took it inside of the basketball arena and Coach Dooley came over, looked at the costume on the stage, and he said, I want to take it out. And I want to walk out with him. So we put it on Stan.

Dr. Stan Beecham – the Original Hairy Dawg

So the whole deal was that during football practice, I would actually just walk out unannounced on the practice field. Of course, Coach Dooley knew what was going on, but I think he was the only one.

Tom Sapp

Stan walked out with Coach Dooley, and I was behind them. We were approaching the receivers and I remember a lot of people turned. They just dropped their arms and looked like, what is that thing?

Stan Beecham

So everybody’s looking around of course, you know, thinking what the hell’s going on here? You know, what’s this guy doing? People start gathering around, and they’re all trying to guess who it was. They thought one of the football players had put this thing on. And so they’re all trying to guess, who is this guy?

Tom Sapp

I had this idea that this six-and-a-half, seven-foot tall bulldog with 28-inch biceps and wide shoulders and I thought boy, he’s gonna run out there and just dwarf these players. He ran out there into the middle of the offensive line and just disappeared.

Even back then, the guys were so big, and I thought, oh man. So Coach Dooley called us into the middle of the huddle.

When he was introducing us, it was really funny because I kept looking around at these guys. I thought well, did they like this thing or not? Do they? And we looked at the pictures later and all of ‘em are laughing in their helmets and smiling and it worked out really, really well.

We stayed that day and did The Vince Dooley Show.

Stan Beecham

Afterwards we went over to Normaltown. There used to be this old bar, Allen’s. I think it was one of the first places in Athens you could get a drink because Athens was dry at one point. When Tom and Mac were in school, that’s where you had to go I think.

Tom Sapp

We went to Allen’s for lunch and Stan still had on the bulldog pants with the tail on it, and we walked in and all these construction workers are looking at him like what in the world? So, I just kind of put my hands up in the air and said let me explain guys, let me explain what’s going on here. That was a fun day.