The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
UGA kicker will stick with his routine
NEW ORLEANS — Rodrigo Blankenship will drink an orange Powerade before tonight’s game. You can be assured of that.
He didn’t before the South Carolina game and, well, we all know what happened then.
Notoriously superstitious about his routines and rituals, Georgia’s star placekicker said he deviated from that before the Bulldogs’ Oct. 12 home game against the Gamecocks. Georgia lost 20-17 in a stunning upset, with Blankenship, who won the 2019 Lou Groza Award as the nation’s best placekicker, missing two fieldgoal attempts, including a 42-yarder in overtime.
To Blankenship, it all went wrong for him when he couldn’t find an orange Powerade at the Georgia Center for Continuing Education, an on-campus hotel in which the Bulldogs stay Friday nights before home games.
“I had a purple Powerade instead of an orange Powerade,” Blankenship said during the Bulldogs’ preparations this week for the Sugar Bowl. “I couldn’t find an orange Powerade in the hotel. So I just thought, ‘It’s not that big of a deal; I’ll just have purple, and it’ll be fine.’ I guess it wasn’t fine.”
Blankenship is only half-joking. Like most kickers, his routine before and during games is very important to him. For instance, he always dresses exactly the same way and in exactly the same order: compression shorts, left sock, right sock, pants, left cleat, right cleat, tie left shoe, tie right shoe, jersey over shoulder pads, shoulder pads and jersey on, helmet, snap chin strap, specs, left wristband, right wristband. He also eats the same meals and same snacks at the same times, depending on kickoff.
Blankenship knows it’s quirky, but it makes him comfortable.
Blankenship was a little off toward the end of this season for the Bulldogs, missing three of his last five field-goal attempts, including a relative chip shot of 37 yards against LSU in the SEC Championship game. Still, he has made 82% of field-goal attempts in his Georgia career, 25 of 31 this season, 6 of 9 from beyond 50 yards and every extra point he’s tried in four seasons with the Bulldogs.
So Blankenship plans to stick with his routine, thank you very much. And, yes, he will drink an orange Powerade before the Sugar Bowl.
“I’ve already found the spot where the orange ones are going to be,” he said.