The University of Georgia, while it is well known for its academics as a respectable four-year college they also have a very successful athletics program.
“The University of Georgia ranks second all-time among all-Southeastern Conference schools with 114 Academic All-Americans,” the UGA athletics website stated.
On Jan. 10, the Bulldogs’ football team added to their success by winning the College Football National Championship. While this is a great achievement in itself, winning their first National Championship in 41 years makes it all that more exciting for UGA fans.
The final score of the game was Georgia with 33 and the University of Alabama with 18. The first half of the game was expectedly low-scoring with both teams having very effective defenses. However, the second half was much more engaging with several memorable plays, one of which being a pick-six (an interception that is returned for a touchdown) by Kelee Ringo to secure the win for the Dawgs in the last moments of the game.
Wendy Mabon, a teacher at McIntosh was present in Lucas Oil Stadium for the game. “I’ve never been somewhere with that much energy, the Georgia fans were just so excited for the game,” Mabon said.
For Mabon, the energy at the game was a great experience but she specifically mentioned how special it was to be a part of something big and share that with so many other people. “It felt very much like this community of people… everybody was just so excited to be there. Definitely on the plane and I’m thinking in every restaurant we went to somebody started the Georgia chant,” Mabon said.
For fans who weren’t able to make the trip to Indianapolis and see the game in person, comradery was in no short supply. Dallas Reagan, a social studies teacher at McIntosh (possibly more well known for his love for Georgia sports) showed his love for the Bulldogs by growing a beard; a superstitious attempt at swaying the odds of the game. “So this summer on a trip to Alaska I got inspired to be a little more burly and started growing a beard. And then when I got back from Alaska, the Atlanta Hawks made the Eastern Conference Finals. And I started thinking; maybe there’s a little superstition to this,” Reagan said. “So I decided to keep it through the rest of the baseball season and it ended in the Braves winning the World Series.”
There were however moments when the beard was at risk of being shaved, “I stuttered a little bit after the loss to Alabama in the SEC championship,” Reagan said. To the relief of many Georgia fans, he said, “but as long as we were playing for it all I decided to keep it.”
When asked if the beard will return for next year, Reagan said, “I think it has to, I think after the drought that Atlanta sports… I feel like I owe it to Atlanta sports. It’s got to keep happening.”
If anyone else is interested in growing a beard in hopes of helping their favorite sports team Reagan gave some grooming advice. “I did a little research when I decided to commit… [I] ordered a Viking Revolution Kit. It comes with a brush. It comes with some beard oils and beard balm… You know the Vikings had good beards,” Reagan said.