A southern tradition: An ancient rivalry renewed
By Phillip Marshall
AuburnTigers.com
George Petrie, a history professor at Alabama Mechanical Military College, and Charles Herty, a chemistry professor at the University of Georgia, couldn’t have imagined what was to come when they arranged for teams from their schools to meet in a game of football, the new sport that was quickly gaining popularity on college campuses across the country.
Petrie and Herty, classmates in graduate school at Johns Hopkins University, had introduced the sport to their respective campuses and had become their schools’ first coaches.
Alabama Mechanical and Military College became Alabama Polytechnic Institute and finally Auburn University. But even in the 1890’s, most people referred to it as Auburn.
On Feb. 20, 1892, at Piedmont Park in downtown Atlanta, Auburn and Georgia played for the first time. Georgia had already played its first game, easily defeating Mercer. But this would be Auburn’s day. Auburn got touchdowns, which counted four points, from Rufus Dorsey and J.L. Culver. It got a goal, which counted two points, from Frank Lupton.
Thousands came to watch – some in carriages, some in buggies, some on horseback. The teams wore rugby caps and white jackets and trousers trimmed in school colors. Georgia brought along a goat as a mascot.
When Auburn and Georgia officials gathered at the site of the original game in 1992, then-Georgia athletic director Vince Dooley paused to remember the goat, “Sir William.”
“A Billy goat might well have become Georgia’s official mascot instead of a bulldog,” Dooley said, “if shortly after the game Sir William hadn’t become barbecue.”
A tradition was born that winter day in Atlanta. Except for 1917, 1918 and 1943, when world wars intervened, Auburn and Georgia have met in football every year since. They will meet again Saturday in the 117th renewal of the series. More than a century after they played for the first time, the series is dead even at 54-54-8.
Generations of young men have gone proudly to represent their schools. They have played with uncommon ferocity and dedication and have written proud chapters in the history of southern football. Brothers have played against brothers, friends against friends.
Shug Jordan, who played and coached at Auburn, was a Georgia assistant when he was named head coach at Auburn in 1951. Joel Eaves, who had been an outstanding Auburn athlete, had achieved exalted status as Auburn’s basketball coach when he was named athletic director at Georgia in 1963. He promptly hired Dooley, Auburn’s freshman coach and a former Tiger quarterback, to be Georgia’s head coach. Pat Dye was an All-American Georgia lineman before he led Auburn to the greatest decade in its football history.
Rodney Garner, Auburn’s associate head coach and defensive line coach, was an All-SEC Tiger offensive lineman. He spent 15 seasons at Georgia as an assistant before returning to join Gus Malzahn’s staff last December.
“It’s a very important game,” Garner says. “The schools are sister schools with lots of similarities. Great Auburn men were great coaches at Georgia and Georgia men at Auburn. They have so many similarities that they are actually joined together. For us to be what we want to be from a talent standpoint, we need to be able to recruit the state of Georgia. It gives a little more to the rivalry and the significance of it.
“There’s just a lot of history behind it.”
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As Jack Meagher’s players celebrated around him, tears of pride and joy streamed down his face. The final seconds were melting off the clock at Memorial Stadium in Columbus, Ga.
The day was Nov. 21, 1942, and the guns of World War II were growing louder. Meagher had brought his Auburn football team to play Georgia in a game that seemed a lost cause. In nearby Phenix City, Ala., bookies were giving four or five touchdowns to anyone foolhardy enough to put money on the Tigers. After all, Georgia had Frank Sinkwich ad Charlie Trippi and was on its way to the Rose Bowl.
Football had been a lot of fun at Georgia in 1942. The Bulldogs rolled into Columbus unbeaten. They’d beaten Florida 72-0, the same Florida team that had beaten Auburn 6-0. Auburn was 4-4-1.
But on that day, Meagher’s men reached to the sky and brought down a football giant. Meagher had a plan for Georgia, and his players made it work. The stunned Bulldogs, anticipating a rout, had no answer. Auburn won 27-13, and it could have been worse.
Auburn ran from the T-formation for the first time that day, catching Georgia by surprise. Meagher also unveiled a new defensive plan. Tackles would drop back, covering for rushing ends. Fifty years later, a similar scheme became popularly known as the zone blitz.
Georgia scored first when Sinkwich went over from the 2, and it seemed this one would go like it was expected to go. But Auburn tailback Monk Gafford and his teammates, most of whom would be gone to war a year later, had other ideas. Not only did the Tigers beat Georgia’s greatest team, they dominated. All through the afternoon, they threatened to blow it open and make an embarrassing Georgia day even more embarrassing.
It was a glorious day in Auburn’s football history, an upset that has stood the test of time. And it was another memorable day in the most memorable of southern college football series.
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The Auburn-Georgia series moved from Columbus to campus sites after the 1958 season. Georgia won 14-13 in Athens in 1959 when Frank Tarkenton scored the winning touchdown after a fumble by Auburn quarterback Bryant Harvard. The fumble was recovered by none other than Pat Dye. The loss cost Auburn the SEC championship.
In 1960, at what was then Cliff Hare Stadium, Auburn won 9-6 in a bruising battle. The venue had changed. The intensity had not.
In 1971, the two teams matched perfect records in Athens. It was, at the time,, the latest in the season two unbeaten SEC teams had met. Pat Sullivan through four touchdown passes and Auburn won 35-20.
As the years went by, championships were won and championships were lost when the Tigers and the Bulldogs met in November. It could be the same Saturday.
No. 7 Auburn (9-1, 5-1) needs wins over Georgia (6-3, 4-2) and Alabama to win the West and advance to the SEC Championship Game. Georgia needs victories over Auburn and Kentucky to stay in the mix with Missouri and South Carolina in the East.
Auburn will have the homefield advantage. Or is it an advantage? Georgia is 14-10-2 all-time at Auburn. And Auburn is 18-12 all-time at Georgia.
Former athletics director and noted Auburn historian David Housel says the rivalry is special because of the lack of hate between the two schools.
“I think Auburn-Georgia is the greatest rivalry we have,” Housel says. “I think it’s what every Deep South rivalry ought to be – tough, hard-fought, intense, but when the game is over, it’s over.
“I think the anticipation of winning is greater than the fear of losing. I think in the Alabama series the fear of losing is greater, which means there is negative motivation. Everything about the Auburn-Georgia game is positive.”
Dye dominated Georgia for most of his time at Auburn, winning seven out of eight in the series from 1983 through 1990.
“I don’t think anybody who ever plays in that game can ever forget it,” Dye says. “It just doesn’t matter where it’s played. It’s so intense and so tough, but at the same time, it’s family.”
