It’s late September, and I had just turned 10 years old. Ten is a glorious age…you’re still a kid, but thinking you turned a pivotal corner in life where now you’re a “big kid”. You ride your bike on the neighborhood street by yourself. You get to start watching some grown-up movies, and that summer was some kind of awesome. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Ghostbusters. Red freaking Dawn (Wolverines!!!). Police Academy and Footloose. Little did I know that Terminator was about to come out next and completely blow my mind.
McDonalds hamburgers were around 50 cents, and they sold something called Sanka. With the Eastern bloc boycotting the Olympics, the summer of 1984 saw the Americans slaughter the medal count and we were brimming with youthful national pride. Red Dawn fueled that a bit. I was 10, sue me. Also, about the same time, Miami Vice aired on TV. It was peak little man machismo time, to be sure.
About the same time I was getting into some peak 80s music, too, and listening to 96 Rock in the evenings (or Z93). Prince was peaking and even had Purple Rain the movie come out, but Huey Lewis and the News and the Cars were two of my faves at the time. Around the same month, this song peaked on the Billboard at #1:
That one would come on at night and I still think fondly of our house in Jonesboro as the late fall evenings allowed us to open the windows and run the ceiling fans, cool breeze blowing through the room. Drifting off to the sounds of the radio in the background, and dreaming of cracking whips like Indy, fighting Ghosts, or the Russians, whichever foe appeared first, I was in my imaginative prime.
I’m a single child, and we didn’t have many kids in the neighborhood, so I also dreamt of playing Georgia football. My opponent, rather than being another person, would be the several black trash bags filled with grass clippings after dad mowed the yard. I’d throw the ball as high as I could, catch it, and run into the bags on purpose to be tackled.
Don’t make fun here. It was the best I could do all by my lonesome.
If I wasn’t trying to be a Wolverine or a Ghostbuster, I was madly fighting the black plastic foe to be the best Bulldog I could be. I wanted to be Herschel or Belue or Lastinger. I wore red and black religiously. My shirts were often either Bulldogs or Adamson Indians, where my parents taught in the 80s. I was swelling with team and community pride.
So the same week that Waite’s hit, Missing You, hit the number 1 spot was the same week Georgia was gearing up for Clemson. Little did I know that a moment in Georgia lore was about to unfold.
Man, talk about amazing. The 84 season wasn’t by the standards set the previous years, but the kick – and the amazing call by Munson – was something life changing. I don’t think words can do justice to the moment in the game, so Larry’s take on it will be more than enough for those purposes.
The following Monday, I’d go to Lake Harbin into Ms. Ontall’s room, wearing my Georgia shirt and a smile, to boot. It wouldn’t be long that my typical spirit gear would slowly be replaced with some slightly neon pastel shirts and knock-off Ray Ban sunglasses, doing my best impersonation of Sonny Crockett, riding my Huffy and pretending I was cruising in a black Testarossa. Missing You would be replaced a week later by Let’s Go Crazy by Prince, although Waite’s song so appropriately matched with Butler’s feat from the prior weekend.
And I’d return to my parent’s front yard Sanford Stadium, doing my level best to be the Bulldawg great I wanted to be. But this time, instead of dodging trash bags and throwing the ball high into the air, I used the two pecan trees at the end of the yard as goal posts, put the ball up on a kicking tee, and started practicing to be the next Kevin Butler.
I was a Freshman in 1984 at UGA and this was my first “real” game (G-Day doesn’t count) at Sanford Stadium. After the kick, there was a deafening crowd roar, then all I remember was hugging and kissing complete strangers all around me and winding up 3 rows below my seat because we were jumping all over one another. With the exception of the 2017 Rose Bowl and 2021 Natty, this was the most amazing UGA sports ending that I’ve witnessed in person. This was the moment I became a hardcore Dawg fan for life!
The 84 Clemson game was my first Georgia game! I had just moved to Athens and really didn’t want to be here, 40 years later I’m a died in the wool Dawg!!!
Kevin Butler wasn’t finished with kicking at UGA. That year that he came back and was a GA for Kirby and turned “Specs” into an all-world kicker was his greatest contribution for UGA football. Once a Dawg always a Dawg.
84 was the 60 yarder against Clemson.
Fantastic game and finish. We almost let Clemson and Iggy steal it back from us, though. After kicking off from the 25, Clemson ran it back to our 45, but I think time ran out on the return. Good thing there was no replay.
That was one of the wildest games I’ve ever been to.
GA might have kit the return man while out of bounds. That would have been a 15-yard penalty and one free play. Clemson kicker was very good and had a good chance of making a 40 yarder to win, but Coach Dooley told everyone to get off of the field and go in the locker room. The refs panicked and no one make the late hit call. DAWGS WIN.
Aahhh, 96 Rock!!!!!
….”Come get me, Mother! I’m through!!”
1984? Yeah man! At the tender age of 10 with caring parents you were probably sheltered from the awesomeness that is:
Man what a great write up. You’re just a touch older than me. I was seven i. 1984. You brought back some memories with the description of the open windows at night in September. I can remember coming home from now hunts on Sunday evenings in September and the windows being up and how that felt at bed time. Good stuff.
Bow hunts. My phone thinks it’s smart but it ain’t.
Nostalgia so thick I had to brush it away from my face. Nice post.
I went to school in Clayco. My little sister took ballet at a dance academy in the Lake Harbin plaza. You ever eat Sarge’s chicken?
Absolutely. ClayCo was a beautiful place to grow up in the 80s, and I still mourn the extinction of Great American Hot Dog in Forest Park.
Ate many times at the Hot Dog house. I graduated from Forest Park in 79. Got to play against Scott Woerner in my sophomore year of 77. Jonesboro was the big rivalry then.
*76 not 77. I smoked too much weed from Blair Village. Between the weed and suspension football helmets my memory is not like it was.
I used to love the Great American Hot Dog place! We would always eat there after going to Ft. Gillem.
Great write up JP! Brings back 2 member-berries from ’84:
I imagine that being your first game!!
I just discovered this blog today. Good to see some familiar names. I’ve missed the Senator tremendously. Even thought of subscribing to the Athletic so I can read Seth. I’ll probably do that too. But now I have this to read! Feels a little like home. Thanks gentlemen!
Glad you’re here. It seems like more of the old crowd from GTP are making their way over lately and that’s good. There for a while we were a pretty small but determined band of dissidents around here but the numbers seem to be growing. The guys that write do a good job and there are a lot of days I swear it’s the Senator writing.
Glad you found us. Tell your friends where we are. We are just trying to keep the old gang together. We can never replace the Senator, but we can keep his legacy alive.
Like ChicagoDawgFan, it was my first game as a freshman (but not my first Dawgs game in Sanford). I remember it being really, really hot, of course. I wore a short-sleeved red button down shirt that I eventually opened all the way, and wound up with a red streak of sunburn down my chest and abdomen.
That game, and that kick, are such great memories that it *almost* makes me forget that we lost the next week at Columbia (I was there), and then later lost in Jacksonville, at Auburn (I was there), and to the NATS. We were coming off the Cotton Bowl win, and I didn’t see that many losses coming.
I mean, it’s (thankfully) almost unimaginable now that we could lose to S Carolina, Florida, Auburn, and GTU in the same season. Thank God we had Butler to keep it from being worse!
As I said earlier it was my first Georgia game. My ex was a prof in the art department and we moved here for the start of the term. I was enrolled in the masters program in Rec and my “office” was in Memorial Hall and you could see inside the stadium in those days! We got here too late to get faculty/staff tickets but the ticket office let us buy tickets in the upper deck in a greek section. We had never seen guys wear ties and women wear dresses at a football game!