How ‘bout them Dawgs?
It is very hard to underestimate the cultural importance of college football in the South. In fact, I have heard more than one southerner refer to college football as more like a religion than a sport. I tend to agree, and it is one of the things I love about the South, even though it does sometimes attract ridicule from Yankee academics and other outsiders.
The Yankee academics often like to play the psychological routine, blaming the southern obsession with football on the outcome of the “Late Unpleasantness,” but the tradition of the ball game goes back much further than many folks realize.
Among the Cherokee, the story of the ball game as a cultural event goes back at least a thousand years. Long before the colonials arrived, the Cherokee had a well evolved ball play tradition which attracted every bit as much emotional capital as college football does for us today. Called the “Little brother to war” in the Cherokee language, the ball games and teams attracted intense emotional investment, not to mention gambling, from the communities that supported them. In truth, there is not a dollar bet worth of difference between then and now.
We still get emotional about our ball teams. There are more rules now of course, but in many ways, the ballgame is still the “Little brother to war.” We still have an emotional attachment to our hometown team, and sometimes, just maybe, the victory of our hometown team will bring better luck to the old hometown.
I was still a boy when the Georgia Bulldogs won their last National Championship. Times were different then of course, but in some ways those times were remarkably similar to these times. There were culture war debates, contentious elections, and economic uncertainty.
Today there are culture war debates, contentious elections, and economic uncertainty. But after the Dawgs won that championship, things seemed to get better. At least we all felt better. And one thing is for sure, whether that championship was medicine or placebo, Georgia damn sure went on a seemingly unstoppable streak of expansion and prosperity in the years that followed. We built new airports, new highways, and a lot of folks made new fortunes, it felt like a great time to be from Georgia.
If there is any truth to these old traditions, or superstitions, the Dawgs’ latest championship could not have come at a better time. We need all the good medicine we can get right now. What with the pandemic, inflation, social unrest, and everything else going on, we really need some good news.
And as if it could not get any better, there is Stetson Bennett. A walk-on with little support, Stetson Bennett was panned by more than a few local sports writers. Lesser men, grown men, have folded under far less pressure. But Bennett did not. No, as his teammates describe him, he kept his focus and just kept working. A real working-class hero.
And now he is a winner. The best revenge is living well, they say. If I had written this season for the Bulldogs, or for Stetson Bennett, I could not have written it any better. I hope the championship brings as much good luck to our state as it will bring good fortune to the team. We needed some good news; we needed this championship. It could not have come at a better time for the Bulldogs, and it could not have come at a better time for Georgia.
Four decades ago, everybody in Georgia was saying the same thing, and this week we’re all saying it again, “How ‘bout them Dawgs?”