Winter 2018 is pretty much the worst for Georgia fans

The Dawgs narrowly missed our first National Championship win in nearly 40 years. The Falcons lost in the playoffs relinquishing a shot at redemption in the Super Bowl.

And because we’ve been so caught up in football (at the time of writing this piece), the Hawks have a record of 11 wins and 31 losses, putting them at the bottom of the Eastern NBA conference. Don’t even get me started on the Braves.

Being a sports fan in Atlanta pretty much sucks right now.

Love hurts

The mood on Monday, Jan.2, in Atlanta shifted from joyous to morose in less than 24 hours. High from a Rose Bowl win, Georgia fans were optimistic about playing on our home turf at the new Mercedes-Benz stadium. As I was driving to watch the game with my fellow UGA alumni (and very supportive Tech husband) I had butterflies in my stomach. I was nervous about this game but in the best way possible.

The bar I was at felt like a college bar in Athens on Game Day, except we were at the Battery in Atlanta. Everyone was riled up in their red and black with only a smattering of Bama fans in our midst. After three scoreless quarters, no one expected the Dawgs to “pull an Atlanta” and go through what happened to the Falcons in the Super Bowl.

The only thing that hurt worse than my heart breaking was that drunk Bama bitch who dropped her elbow into shoulder when she was jumping up and down at the end of overtime.

On Tuesday, Jan. 3, it was a dark day for the Bulldog Nation. Tired from a late night and our hearts shattered like we’d just been through a breakup, I talked to some of my fellow Dawgs fans about how being a Georgia fan is like being in a long-term relationship. I got multiple responses that it’s “an abusive one”.

Except that it’s not.

We could be in the same boat as Kentucky, Vanderbilt, Tech, or most of the ACC teams knowing that our football season will always suck. That’s not the case for Georgia fans.

Love is about compromise

When you’re in a long-term relationship, it’s about giving and receiving and understanding things don’t always go as planned. You never get everything you want, and if you do, that might mean you’re getting spoiled.

Alabama fans of late don’t know what this is like with their five National Championships in nine years. For Georgia fans, we haven’t ridden a wave like the Tide. Our love has had its ups and downs with wins and losses.

My sister, Mandy (also a UGA alumni) with her supportive boyfriend, Andrew, after the Dawgs devastating loss to Tennessee in 2015

Love has its let downs

In relationships, especially long-term ones, they come with disappointments. People are fallible. The only perfect love is God’s, and as hard as we prayed for the Dawgs to win, the Good Lord had other plans for the National Championship.

But remember, y’all, the 2017 football season was the best one we’d had in years! It was the first time we’d been to the Rose Bowl since the 1940s, our first SEC Championship since 2005. And yes, losing the National Championship in OT totally sucked, but we made still it there!

Love gives us hope

There’s nothing better in the world than being in love. Every time I arrive in Athens, Ga., my heart swells with the same passion I felt the first time I set foot on UGA’s campus at 16.

Tailgating before a big game, sitting in Sanford Stadium as the trumpet sounds, cheering as loud as possible with your favorite people in the world, that’s what love feels like as a Georgia fan.

Yours truly with two of my favorite Bulldogs, Matt and Katy Ruth.

To all the newbies who hopped on the Dawgs bandwagon, welcome to the party! We’re happy to add more folks to the Bulldog Nation. We love the South, our homeland, and our boys in the silver britches.

The UGA alumni association wrote:

“It’s been an unforgettable season for UGA’s football team. Despite the game’s outcome, there’s still plenty of reasons to be proud of the Georgia Bulldogs. This year’s squad demonstrated what it means to give it your all, to work together, and to play with heart. The results speak for themselves.”

We are just getting started

This was only Kirby Smart’s second season as UGA’s head coach and he got a shot at the Vince Lombardi trophy. As fate would have it, I was eating at the original Antico Pizza in Atlanta a few days ago and this poster with words from Lombardi himself was hanging above us.

One day soon, we’ll share all of Lombardi’s wise words. Perhaps we’ll save it for the 2018 football season. Until then dear reader, have faith in our boys in the silver britches. Yes, Roquan Smith may be going pro but we have the best recruiting class in the nation coming in! Jake Fromm will only be a sophomore, and if we’re lucky we’ll have him for two more seasons, maybe three.

And Lord, hopefully Coach Smart will continue his momentum and we’ll find ourselves back at the National Championship next year. For now…

Go Dawgs!

“The Devil went down to Georgia,
He was looking for a soul to steal”

“He was in a bind, ’cause he was way behind,
He was willing to make a deal”

On Tuesday, Jan. 2, President Donald Trump tweeted about how his nuclear arsenal rivaled North Korea’s. On Wednesday, Jan. 3, he decided to attend the college football national championship.

There is enough circumstantial evidence to decide that Trump is unstable, and a menace to society.

Trump is willing to do anything at this point to divert attention from his complete ineptitude. Between the Mueller investigation, Michael Wolff’s book launching, and all the other shit he’s trying to sweep under the rug, he’s in a big ole bind. Whoever on his team thought “oh let’s send him to ‘Trumpland’ for Georgia vs. Alabama” what a completely asinine idea.

I am uncomfortable with this situation, and y’all should be, too.

“Cause hell’s broke loose in Georgia and the Devil deals the cards”

Atlanta already has a target on its back because of the CDC.

Trump hauling Air Force One down here is like a fat fucking bullseye for disaster.

We still don’t know how our city and Georgia Power are going to prevent another blackout from happening at the world’s busiest airport, but Trump doesn’t give a shit about that.

Atlanta traffic was already going to be bad with 72,000 people attending the game, not to mention the fact it’s a Monday. Schools and local government offices may be closed due to “inclement weather” but we’ll still have more than a million other people on the road.

In 2015, when Vice President Joe Biden rolled through during rush hour, I got stuck on Peachtree Street waiting for the motorcade to pass. That shit was awful. I probably sat parked in Midtown for more than half an hour.

But shit y’all, Trump doesn’t care about the rest of us and the impact his presence will have on our city.

“Fire on the Mountain, run, boys, run!”

Lest we forget, it was almost one year ago that Trump gaslit Atlanta with tweets trolling Rep. John Lewis.

Congressman John Lewis should spend more time on fixing and helping his district, which is in horrible shape and falling apart (not to……

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 14, 2017

But when you’re losing your damn mind, your short-term memory is shot so we’ll see what the old Trumpster fire tweets this time

“The Devil’s in the house of the rising sun”

In July 2016, Trump held a rally at The Fox Theatre where Vince Dooley and Herschel Walker endorsed the man for president. I haven’t been able to look at these men as heroes of the Bulldog Nation ever since. They tarnished themselves.

One of the purest parts about 2017 was the beauty of the University of Georgia’s football season. The Dawgs are going to our first National Championship in a millennial’s lifetime. Yours truly and our pals at Pretty Southern weren’t even born the last time Georgia was declared the best team in the country. Trump’s bloated ass is literally tainting this game.

Trump is not a president — he is a charlatan with enough brand recognition and influence to be used by more powerful, wealthy and evil people to hijack our country’s democratic process. I will not stay silent about this shit any longer.

We the people expect better. Shit y’all, we were calling for Coach Mark Richt to be fired after losing a few games, and he’s a great man. But Trump can threaten North Korea with nuclear war and we still haven’t shoved his ass out the gotdamn door?!

Trump is neither Southern nor hospitable, and we should give him no quarter. He is an enemy of the state. He insulted my home. Trump is a Damn Yankee.

“I done told you once, you son of a bitch, I’m the best there’s ever been”

Trump, you are not welcome in this city. The resistance can’t stop you from coming, but we can call ‘foul!’ as loud as possible. There was a brief moment where I considered not watching this game out of protest (resist fully or not at all) but then I was reminded that I am a Bulldog in more ways than one.

I bleed red and black, and my heart loves the red, white and blue.

The Bulldog Nation is woke as fuck. We ain’t going back to sleep.

Whatever this event may bring, we are ready for it.

#GoDawgs

Editor’s note – image created by Radio Valenica, found via Google. Lyrics from Charlie Daniels Band

For the record, I’m jealous of all y’all who were in Pasadena for the Rose Bowl 2018

Watching the game unfold from home in Atlanta was an unbelievable experience. A rough, rocky, you name it first half was followed by nail-biting for two more quarters leading to a momentous, historic overtime culminating in a Georgia win.

It is indeed great to be a Georgia Bulldog!

I’ve been a Georgia fan for the better part of my life now. Having decided at 16 that I wanted to attend UGA’s Grady College of Journalism & Mass Communication, I picked the right time to join the Bulldog Nation. It was 2002, the year of the “Davids” when David Greene and David Pollack won the SEC Championship.

Georgia won the SEC Championship again in 2005 when I was a junior at UGA and D.J. Shockley was the quarterback for the Dawgs. Georgia went on to the Sugar Bowl in Atlanta (after Hurricane Katrina decimated New Orleans) and I got lucky enough to attend but, alas, Georgia got pummeled by West Virginia. I subsequently pissed off a bunch of Mountaineers and ended up on Deadspin.

And I think that’s the cool thing that unites everyone who is a college football fan: no matter how old you get, despite the years out of school, you still bleed your school’s colors and cheer as loud as possible.

With two of my favorite UGA alumni, Matt Foster & Katy Ruth Camp at Homecoming

Over the past decade, we had some fabulous times during the Coach Mark Richt era. There were big wins with Knowshon, A.J. Green, Todd Gurley, Aaron Murray, Matt Stafford, the list of greatness from our boys in the silver britches goes on. We had some big wins but tough losses and no SEC Championship which my husband’s Georgia Tech fraternity brothers loved to remind me every football season.

It has been 12 years since it felt this good to be a UGA fan

After a wild 2017, starting the year off with UGA going to play for the NCAA College Football National Championship feels absolutely spectacular. I wasn’t even born the last time Georgia won it all with Vince Dooley and Herschel Walker (who by the way are still on my shit list for endorsing The Trumpster Fire).

Making it this far, being recognized as one of the top two teams in the nation, is a feeling of excitement, honor, and years of passionate support paying off. This holiday season, it felt like Christmas came three different times.

• First on Dec. 2, 2017, when the Dawgs won the SEC Championship
• The second time on actual Christmas
• On Jan. 1, 2018, winning the Rose Bowl

Larry Munson has that famous line about “sugar falling from the sky”, and if Munson was still around today I like to think there would have been some lovely remarks about rose petals raining down on the Bulldog Nation. Kinda like that scene in Gladiator when Maximus has his great fight in the arena.

As our pal, Shane, wrote in his column about how Georgia’s “never been here before” I’d like to share my favorite passage that rings so true for every UGA alumni and fan.

“The entire country now knows about this team what Georgia fans hoped would prove true all year: that we belong here. That it was worth it. That pledging your heart to something as pointless and capricious as a football team can someday deliver an emotional payoff, even at the University of Georgia.”

So now we are praying and preparing for Georgia to face Alabama in the 2018 College Football National Championship. It’s master vs. apprentice with Kirby Smart taking on his old boss, Nick Saban. The last time Georgia played Alabama was in 2015 and literally the most depressing game I ever attended. It was a torrential downpour in Athens and the Crimson Tide rolled through Sanford Stadium winning 38-10. Coach Richt was let go from UGA that season, and in comes Kirby Smart who (as offensive coordinator at Bama) put that hurtin’ on the Bulldogs.

Over the past two years, we’ve witnessed a transformation at Georgia. There’s the Smart factor combined with the phenomenal talent of Nick Chubb, Sony Michel, fucking true freshman Jake Fromm, and all the guys on this year’s squad. This is the Georgia team we’ve hoped and prayed for. Regardless of what happens in the National Championship, we’ve made it farther in our lifetime than ever before.

Thank you to all everyone in the Bulldog Nation for this incredible journey. We’ll see what happens next week.

Let’s #GoDawgs!

Editor’s note: this article is contributed by Shane Vaiskauskas. The last time UGA played in the Rose Bowl was 1943. We won against UCLA, 9-0.

“I’ve been here before,” I thought to myself, nervously.

Not literally here, mind you. This was my first visit to Mercedes-Benz Stadium. But five years prior, just a few hundred feet away in the recently-demolished Georgia Dome, I had watched the Georgia Bulldogs carry a one-score lead into the fourth quarter of the SEC Championship Game against Alabama.

Here I sat, in the upper end zone corner, in a seat I paid $700 for, as the clock expired in the third quarter of the SEC Championship Game. Auburn had converted a third down, then gained 12 more yards on a QB run. We led 13-7 as the quarter ended.

“I’ve been here before,” I repeated to myself, trying to avoid getting my hopes up.

The band played “The Planet Krypton” as they have in the fourth quarter of every Georgia game I can remember. The fans turned on their cell phone flashes to light up the stadium as they have since last season.

“I’ve been here before,” I repeated to myself, tuning out the fans around me, discussing defensive adjustments and how we just need to finish out the game.

The whistle blew to start the fourth quarter. The players lined up. A handoff to Auburn’s injured star tailback, Kerryon Johnson. From perhaps a literal mile away, it looks all too easy for Johnson to gain 4 yards. The defense finally makes the tackle. We see the ball squirm out. Roquan Smith, Georgia’s star linebacker, sees it too. He scoops it up in stride. Turnover. Four plays later, we score a touchdown.

I’ve never been here before.

Georgia would go on to hold Auburn to a 3-and-out, then add another touchdown a few plays later to ice the game with over 10 minutes remaining. Auburn fans head to the exits. The score would not change again: 28-7.

I’ve never been here before.

After the game, the team is presented the SEC Championship trophy on the field. The majority of the stadium–Georgia fans–stays behind to watch. By winning the SEC Championship, Georgia has guaranteed a spot in the College Football Playoff. We’re two games away from our first national championship since the 1980 season.

I’ve never been here before.

UGA’s Sanford Stadium at the 2014 Clemson game that we won 45-21.

Georgia is a storied college football program. We are one of the sport’s so-called blue bloods, whose relevance in the sport has rarely waned. We have a large stadium, a rabid fan base, plenty of 10-win seasons and bowl victories, and a raft of players in the NFL. There are over a hundred major college football programs that would trade places with us in a heartbeat.

In the past 20 years, prior to this season, we had won the SEC and the Sugar Bowl twice each. We’ve had a #1 preseason ranking, a #2 final ranking, the #1 overall pick in the NFL draft and plenty of first-round talent. We’ve been a perennial top-10 team, but we never broke through to the national championship conversation.

And yet, we’re still very much the outsiders. Our best, most exciting teams of the past two decades have all stumbled at the wrong time.

In 2002, our 13-1 record was good enough for third. Ohio State and Miami, both undefeated, played each other for the championship.

In 2005, our two losses kept us firmly out of the picture, despite winning the SEC.

In 2007, an inexplicable loss on the road to Tennessee cost us our spot in the SEC Championship Game, and with it, our chance for immortality. We finished the season ranked second. In 2012, we were four yards away from beating Alabama. They went on to throttle Notre Dame and win it all. It was their hundredth title, probably.

I’ve never been here before.

Five SEC teams have won national championships in the past 20 years. Georgia isn’t among them. Our rivals are happy to remind us. Analysts are happy to remind viewers. We’re a perennial also-ran, a team too good to ignore entirely but not good enough to believe in. Our fanbase is large, loyal, and loud, but our bark is worse than our bite.

Deep down, this has been a sneaking suspicion, my quietest fear. What if we never win? What if all of the time, money, and passion I’ve put into this team never amounts to anything? What if four yards short against Bama is the closest I will ever see? I’ve already witnessed 30 fruitless football seasons, how many more do I have left?

Do I dare get my hopes up?

I’ve never been here before.

ESPN College Game Day from the UGA-LSU game in 2013. We won 44-41

Over the past few weeks, Georgia has gained momentum in the national college football conversation. Countless networks covered our practices and provided updates not just to fans, but to casual observers. Analysts break down our film and compare our strengths and weaknesses to the other playoff teams. Two-by-two, the rest of the country played their bowl games. Their seasons will end short of where we are right now, and then they will turn their attention to the four playoff teams remaining. To the Georgia Bulldogs. To my team.

They’ll talk about how our defense reads and reacts so well, how our front-seven are so adept at stopping the run, and how Roquan Smith is a field general at middle linebacker. They’ll talk about our freshman quarterback, Jake Fromm, who never seems to let the moment be too big for him. They’ll talk about our senior tailbacks, Nick Chubb and Sony Michel, who chose to return to school for a shot at a championship instead of getting rich in the NFL. They’ll talk about our charismatic young coach, Kirby Smart, who played for Georgia in the 90’s and has his alma mater back to national relevance in only his second season.

The entire country now knows about this team what Georgia fans hoped would prove true all year: that we belong here. That it was worth it. That pledging your heart to something as pointless and capricious as a football team can someday deliver an emotional payoff, even at the University of Georgia.

I’ve never been here before.

We’ve traveled to Pasadena, CA, to play Oklahoma in the Rose Bowl. That may be where the season ends. On the biggest stage I’ve ever seen Georgia play, we may suffer through yet another disappointment. This season’s Dawgs, like so many before them, may be left to limp home after a heartbreaking reminder that we still do not yet belong.

But we might not. We might beat Oklahoma and advance to the title game a week later. We might even win that and be memorialized for all time as the best team of 2017. In my lifetime, we’ve never played for such high stakes on such a large stage.

At the end of the SEC Championship festivities, before we filed out into the concourse with the other Georgia fans, I sat back in my seat, closed my eyes, and sat in silence for 30 seconds. Then I pinched myself. This time, it was really happening.

I’ve never been here before. But I’m going to enjoy the hell out of this ride.

Go Dawgs!

Shane Vaiskauskas is a management consultant who lives in New York City with his wife and their growing collection of board games. Shane grew up outside of Atlanta and, after the better part of a decade, graduated from the University of Georgia in 2009. He hosts a moderately popular Dungeons & Dragons podcast called Total Party Thrill, and tweets about sports and other meaningless games, @Mundangerous. Shane is pictured here with his sister, Caitlin Vaiskauskas, and best bud Jeff Putnam.