Georgia Football: Fan journal from Georgia’s win in the Duke’s Mayo Classic

Every season, I meet my brother and my childhood best friend at a Georgia football game for a weekend of all things Dawgs.

My brother happens to live in Charlotte, so when the news dropped in early 2020 that Georgia football would open the 2021 season against Clemson in the Queen City, we all circled the weekend on our calendars to make it happen.

Our assumption, even when the game was announced, was that it would be a monster opener, most likely between Top 5 teams.

We figured it had the potential to be the host locations for ESPN’s College Gameday, and we also figured it would be the ABC Game of the Week, meaning it’d be a night kick.

As the calendar slowly flipped, all of those things came to fruition. Georgia-Clemson wouldn’t just be any opener, it would be the primetime main event to kick off the 2021 season with the eyes of the collective college football world casting their gaze upon the Duke’s Mayo Classic.

We starting making our arrangements for the opener to end all openers about six months ago. After months of planning and an agonizingly long wait, this is how it all turned out.

One of the tough parts of planning logistics for a neutral site game is lack of familiarity with the host city or town. Where should we stay? Where should we eat? What’s parking like? Where will we tailgate?

We’ve got some experience planning road game pilgrimages: Knoxville, Nashville, South Bend, Columbia, Tuscaloosa, Pasadena, and on and on. Every different host town presents its own challenges.

We made the decision early that we wanted our headquarters for the weekend to be in an RV at a lot within reasonable walking distance to Bank of America Stadium. That takes all of the main variables – lodging, parking, food, and tailgating – and consolidates them in to one package.

We used to always Airbnb for road games, but as the price on those has eclipsed hotels over the years, we started looking for different lodging solutions. One trip, we decided to try out RV Share, and we’ve been RV disciples ever since.

The times we’ve used them, the RV owners have come to our designated parking lot, set up the RV, and have everything up, running, and functional by the time we pulled in the parking lot. When the weekend was over, we’d pack and clean up and the owner comes and picks it up. No muss, no fuss.

We didn’t end up using RV Share on this trip. A family friend had a Class A RV and offered to let us use it for the weekend. Yes, please!

We set up parking through the NASCAR Hall of Fame. They have a lot for oversized vehicles right across from the HOF and they rent it out to RVs and tailgaters during football weekends.

The price was really reasonable, and it was about a 15-minute walk to Bank of America Stadium. That also meant we were a 15-minute walk from the location of College Gameday, since Romare Bearden Park was only a couple of blocks from BOA.

The lot opened on Friday night at 6 pm. We rolled in with the RV, got set up, popped tops on some cold beverages, and laid out our plans for Saturday. Before we hit the hay, we set an alarm to rise with the roosters – College Gameday could not be missed.

Romare Bearden Park was a prime location for College Gameday. Situated around the corner from Bank of America Stadium, and just outside of the right field gate of the Charlotte Knights magnificent home stadium, Truist Field, it was college football central Saturday morning.

We walked in the gates a little after 7 am and the park was poppin’. The gated-entry fan corrals were already bursting with fans and the entire stock of the iconic College Gameday Presented By Home Depot hard hats adorned the majority of the attendees heads.

We went to a rain-soaked Gameday at the 2018 SEC Championship Game and then again prior to the 2019 Notre Dame game in Athens.

I don’t know that anything will ever top 2019 Gameday in Athens before the Notre Dame game. It was my son’s 7th birthday and David Pollack pulled him up on one of the side stages after one of the live hits, gave him a high five and told him Happy Birthday. Tough to eclipse that memory.

But! But. This was a close second. After the 2020 COVID season where college football’s pulse, it’s lifeblood, it’s soundtrack – the fans – were largely missing, the energy at Bearden Park was jubilance personified.

Georgia fans were WELL represented. Red was the prevalent color throughout the crowd, members of the Spike Squad were there, and Hairy Dawg and the Georgia cheerleaders were front and center.

The guest picker had a Georgia flavor as well. Country music megastar and massive Georgia football fan Kane Brown made his picks with the Gameday crew.

Georgia fans always seem a little weary when Lee Corso’s pick involves donning the Hairy Dawg headgear.

But, it was a chicken skin moment when L-C exclaimed Clemson, then dropped his patented “Not so fast my friend” catchphrase before proclaiming it was the “Year of the Dawg” and pulling on the UGA headgear. What a way to start the day.

We bought our game tickets back in June through Ticketmaster, when Duke’s and the Charlotte Sports Foundation released tickets to the general public.

We picked our seats solely based on where we wanted to sit. After attending so many Dawgs games over the years and sitting everywhere from seats that require a handkerchief for your nose due to their altitude, to seats in the lower bowl, we’ve gotten particular about the vantage point we like best.

So, we bought our tickets, were fired up, and didn’t think too much else about it. Well, on Tuesday of last week, we got an email thanking us for our ticket purchase and informing us of the protocol for picking up our field passes.

Uhhhh, beg pardon?!?! We must have read the email fifteen times to be sure. FIELD PASSES! Our previously uneclipsable (or so we thought) level of excitement had now morphed into an Everest-level elation.

About two hours prior to kick, we entered the East gate and descended down to field level on the Georgia sideline.

This past spring, Bank of America Stadium made the decision to forego a natural grass playing surface in favor of FieldTurf. When we hit the field, we were struck by how similar the bounce and texture felt to a natural surface.

My brother and I both played college baseball, and played on variations of turf over the years, but this was a step above. The field looked absolutely mint.

As we hit the Georgia bench, Head Coach Kirby Smart came out of the tunnel and walked the field in his full suit with his ear buds in. The only time he stopped and removed the headphones was to chat with former Georgia quarterback and first-year Georgia sideline reporter D.J. Shockley. He was completely locked in.

Over the next half hour, the players started to filter out in waves for pregame warmups. There had been some scuttlebutt on message boards and Twitter that other-wordly tight end Darnell Washington may actually play.

Our sliver of hope that it was true evaporated when he came out of the tunnel in shorts and a walking boot. However, it should be noted, he is an absolute unit.

We didn’t think it was possible for him to look any more imposing than he did at G-Day this past April, but he seems to have bulked up even more. When he returns, he will be a matchup nightmare for opposing defenses.

A bevy of notable former Georgia football players roamed the sideline during pregame. Thomas Davis, Malik Herring, and Champ Bailey all soaked in the environment for the majority of the pregame period.

Multiple Georgia players paused their pregame work to come over and chat with Malik Herring. It was clear that his former teammates respected him and were fired up to see him.

Around 7:15, we decided to head up to our seats to make sure we were set and ready prior to Josh Turner’s rendition of the Star-Spangled Banner. Right as we were about to head up the steps to the stands, we noticed a familiar face to our left.

College Gameday’s guest picker, country music star Kane Brown was also taking in the pregame action on the field. We walked over, introduced ourselves, and he was gracious enough to take a picture with us. We chatted with him briefly and he couldn’t have been nicer. We exchanged some hearty “Go Dawgs” with him and then we headed out. It was almost game time.

Let’s just start with this, it felt SO durn good to be back in a full stadium. We went to a couple of the limited capacity games last season, and while football in any form is better than no football at all, fans, full stadiums, bands, and the pageantry of college football are what make it the greatest sport in America. So not having all of that last season took so much away from the experience.

Saturday night at Bank of America Stadium, college football was officially back and firing on all cylinders.

The weather could not have been more perfect, 70 degrees with just a hint of fall crispness. The Charlotte skyline was lit up and glistening, providing the perfect backdrop against the stadium. And the atmosphere. Lawd, that stadium was an electric factory.

Georgia’s video montage teeing up their entrance on to the field sufficiently ginned up the Dawgs fans in attendance and that energy did not wane for four quarters.

It was so loud at certain points that we couldn’t hear each other trying to talk while we were standing beside each other.

Not surprisingly, the loudest moment had to be during Christopher Smith’s pick 6 and the ensuing Savage pads sideline celebration. To quote the venerable Larry Munson from another epic game against Clemson, “The stadium was worse than bonkers.”

Georgia’s defense looked fast, focused, and ferocious all night. Nakobe Dean looked an awful lot like the Montezuma Missile that so many have compared him to. What I liked more than his stellar play was how active he was as the general of the defense, making audible calls and getting his teammates in the proper position to make plays.

Channing Tindall and Jordan Davis also made their presence known, both making multiple big-time plays. It was a fantastic night for Georgia’s version of DDT.

Much maligned in the aftermath of the game, I have a rosier view of Georgia’s offense than most. The unit played without Kearis Jackson, Darnell Washington, Dominick Blaylock, George Pickens, and Tate Ratledge.

Clemson’s defensive gameplan was obviously focused on taking away the vertical passing game, and JT Daniels did what he said he would all offseason – he distributed the football to the open receiver.

Was it plodding and methodical most of the night? Yes. Did it get the job done? Yes. Is the sky the limit for this offense once healthy? Yes.

Inside the stadium, even though Georgia was never up by more than 10, it felt like they were up by a whole lot more. They just seemed in control of the game, dictating outcomes from series to series.

Georgia fans also seemed in control. At no time was that more evident than at the end of the 3rd quarter. Bank of America Stadium’s lights dimmed as all of the Georgia faithful engaged their phone’s flashlight.

It wasn’t Sanford they were lighting up, but it might as well have been. For those few moments, the stadium felt like Sanford North and Dawgs fans presented Exhibit Z in their on-going case for being the college fanbase that travels the best.

The most impressive thing offensively, and I’ll choose this to be my takeaway from that side of the ball – when they got the ball back with four minutes left in the game, everybody and their momma in the stadium and watching at home knew what was coming.

Georgia needed to run the football, pick up first downs, and run the clock out. Even with everybody, including Clemson’s defense, knowing what they were wanting to do, Georgia’s offense went out imposed their will to close out the ballgame.

They used their physicality, picked up tough yards on the ground, and Clemson never saw the football again after turning it over on downs on their final offensive drive.

That is what championship teams do. They close out ballgames. Based on what we saw Saturday night, Georgia has all of the makings of a championship team.

Two postgame moments I’ll savor from the opener. After the final whistle sounded and all of the postgame handshakes and the on-field interview with Holly Rowe, Head Coach Kirby Paul Smart sprinted over to the Georgia sideline, stood atop the benches, and triumphantly waved his visor at Georgia fans. We all went nuts.

Also, on the walk down the concourse and out of the stadium, there were thunderous rotating chants of “U-G-A, U-G-A, U-G-A”, “Who’s that coming down the track . . .”, and “S-E-C, S-E-C, S-E-C”. There was never a more fitting victory concert.

They were awesome moments. Moments that reminded me of another special night in an early season September game. That one happened in South Bend in 2017 and provided to be a barometer of what that season would become. Who knows where this season will go, but it sure felt magical Saturday night. A magical night and magical weekend in Charlotte – Go Dawgs!