David Pollack, who many of you around here have said should be on the Mount Rushmore of Georgia Football, has found a new home for his son.
Man, he can’t deny he’s his father’s son, can he?
Anyway, the Roundtable discussion for today is this – how deep does your loyalty run?
I’ve had the conversation with my kids that, as passionate as daddy is about Georgia, I don’t care if they go to Georgia, Georgia Tech, or Alabama, or anywhere, for that matter, so long as it’s where they want to be and (added bonus) if they are offering a scholarship. We can always root for the good guys on Saturdays, sitting on a paid for couch in a paid for home. Without having to worry about a college loan.
How about you? Do your colors run that deep where you forbid your child from going to a certain school because of football, or are you happy that they’d get to take a free ride…or in Pollack’s case, a possible better paycheck?
Discuss.
My son’s decision didn’t involve athletics, but there are a lot of Bulldogs in our family. I didn’t go to UGA , but both my parents did, my wife and her parents did as well as uncles and cousins. He said he was considering engineering when he was appl to schools and told him that he needed to apply to Tech of that was the case. That ended up being his choice and I know he felt a little odd telling us that is where he felt he should go. We totally supported his decision and it has been a great choice. He loves it there and Tech does a great job taking care of it’s students. He had a great freshman year and we couldn’t be happier.
My wife was even hoping or other son would choose Tech since his brother has had such a great experience. He said he couldn’t do it…lol. He will be in Athens this fall and just had orientation last week.
UGA now has an engineering college again, but they’ve always offered engineering degrees.
However, as much as it pains me to say, Tech is an excellent engineering school. I have friends from UGA who have kids that went to Tech. They still pull for UGA, though. 😀
My son at Tech is still a Dog fan. He still hasn’t figured out who he is pulling for when they play each other though…lol.
Remind him of where the check comes from when he’s deciding whether to drink the little brother Kool-Aid. THWGt.
A few years ago, there was lots of red in the Fech student section for Old Fashioned Hate when I was there for games.
We will love for our kids to go anywhere they can get into, in state, or somewhere comparable in cost😂. I’m taking my son to Kirby camp today! Hopefully there will always be a Dawg fan in him and the others wherever they end up.
Wonderful thing, in state tuition.
In state tuition is why I enrolled in UGA in 1972 instead of a private elite college in North Carolina. I thank God every day for UGA being affordable for a middle class family in the early 1970s. My Dad could, and did, write a check for tuition, a check for the dorm and a check for meal service every quarter and I graduated with a Batchelor’s Degree and a Juris Doctor and zero student loan debt.
Had I gone to my first choice I probably would still be paying back student loans 47 years later.
I also attended UGA in the 70’s. At that time the state covered about 50% of what our education actually cost. Today the state only covers about 25% of what it costs to attend state colleges and universities.
I told my kids there were 2 places I would not write a check (is that still a thing?) for tuition. One was the University of Florida, and the other was the North Avenue Trade School. I’m glad none of the 3 attempted to call my bluff.
I call that good parenting. 😉
I was very similar. I told my kids they had 2 rules when picking a college:
1. They must go AWAY to school, meaning they could not drive home, do laundry, eat dinner and drive back to school the same day. Fortunately that really only ruled out GA Southern which they weren’t interested in anyway.
2. I will NEVER pay 1 penny to the University of Florida.
My oldest could have gone to Tech, but thought I would not approve (I took the Don Draper approach to the NATS – “I don’t think about you at all…”).
Deep enough I only wear orange to keep the game warden from writing a ticket. I get going to watch your kid play ball but you don’t have to wear orange.
I would find a white shirt with Clemson in purple and no tiger paw. When 2 of my kids were considering Mercer, I tried to come up with the alternative to the orange if they had decided to go there.
Auburn offered my son a scholarship so that’s where he’s going. I still don’t own anything orange.
Understanding parental direction, interested to see if son of three time all-american at UGA football, king of the original sack, strip, touchdown, master of his domain, down the road, wants to exit from the klempzun farm and dad says “Ya gotta finish what ya started”or does father advise son accordingly…GO DAWGS!!
Is being a DGD a chicken or egg thing? Heck, I’ve known situations where bleeding Red & Black has turned off kids from following their parents to UGA. Also, I’ve seen kids not make it into UGA and turn on the Dawgs out of spite.
I broke family tradition and enlisted in the Navy instead of the Army over more GI Bill money and guaranteed San Diego Recruit Training (quite the Patriot, huh?). Didn’t apply to Georgia in high school but got provisionally accepted to Tech, I was gonna have to got to Summer School (less than a month from HS graduation) to shore up some math classes for Engineering or I could enroll Fall in any other program. No offense, but why go to Tech if not for Engineering? I wanted to see the world. After my hitch? I did the family ABAC/UGA double. Funny how life can twist and turn. Did date a Georgia Gal whose father was an Old School Gator (Pre-1990 and knew the deal), he had his wife scratch the check for UGA tuition but made it a funny thing.
The spite thing is real. Seen it a good bit among my friends and their kids who didn’t get into UGA.
BUT, I can’t blame a HS player who wasn’t offered by UGA (or who just decided to go elsewhere) for being excited about his next step. And I can’t fault his parents for supporting him.
I wasn’t crazy about the Dooleys wearing orange when Derek was coaching TN, but I get it. He’s their son, they love him, ok.
I had a cousin who was recruited hard by Bobby Cremins. I decided if he went there, I’d pull for him to play well and never wear any Tech stuff. Fortunately, he went somewhere else.🤣
Family is family. Sports are just games.
For our kid, we saved in-state (Texas) money but she wanted to go out of state, so she found a school that gave her scholarships/grants (no loans) and we happily sent her off to school. She joking said once that she was going to go to Tech and I told her that was fine as long as they gave her money to go.
There was only one school on the Daddy Dawglicious Blackball List:
FTMFs.
Auburn was the only school on our shit list. We live 50 miles away and neither of my kids bothered to visit or apply. I can’t stand the place or the weird little brother mindset.
I always told my daughter if UF offered her a scholarship, which is the only conceivable way she would end up there, there would almost certainly be somewhere else offering as well. She ended up at the local South Carolina campus because she gets the LIFE scholarship, but she’s still Dawg through and through. She could still end up in grad school in Columbia, but I don’t doubt she’ll love the Dawgs regardless.
support the child always, but not the child’s school colors
My nephew was born and raised in Columbus so many of his friends were set to go 40 miles west to that orange school. I took him to a UGA game in the outlaw village on the Plains. As we were walking to stadium, I guided us by Toomer’s Corner so he could see the trees with more yards of toilet paper hanging from their limbs than Freeze’s run game had gained all season. He made his choice for UGA then and there. It didn’t matter that the Dawgs won a thrilling game that night.
No contest at house my house .All in on Dawgs!!
I have three daughters. Oldest graduated locally in Fort Worth. Middle went to Tuscaloosa. And youngest went to Austin. I wrote some nasty notes of “love” on the memo line of checks to Alabama. And I might have shared this previously, but at Texas’ orientation the parents are moved separately into an arena and taught to sing The Eyes of Texas. Oh hell no…..I was screaming “what’s that coming down the tracks?”
Never sang Sweet Home Alabama
Never sang The Eyes of Texas
Have worn UGA gear inside Bryant Denny to non UGA games
Have worn UGA gear inside DKR to non UGA games
My kids know….
Working on my 15 yo granddaughter currently – she might be a damn BULLDOG!
We appreciate your mission work. Keep chopping!
I told all 3 of my kids they could go to any school they wanted, as long as it is UGA. I would rather super glue my dick to the space shuttle than send my son to Clemson. Pollack sending his son to Clemson? The end of Western Civilization is near.
Offered car, condo and tuition if they went to UGA. Both stayed in state. Attend Florida, Auburn or Tech? You’re dead to me. I think Megan Mulrooney is a traitor for “Tennessee Orange”. Won’t listen to any of her songs.
My kids grew up in Chapel Hill. When my oldest was in middle school, he still has aspirations to play college baseball. He asked me one day if I would be disappointed if he ended up playing at Duke. I told him no, that I would be proud of him if he got a scholarship to play anywhere, and getting a chance to go to Duke would be amazing. Of course, I followed it up by telling him that I would disown him if he went to Florida. Some things simply cannot be allowed.
I have three children. Both their father and mother (the former wife) matriculated at UGA. I had football season tickets from the time I graduated in 1991 until 2014 when it was just impossibly difficult to go to games with 3 busy kids who had either little or moderate interest in football.
I completed my MS in Sport Marketing & Management at Ga St. While I was there, I learned something valuable about decision-making beyond the classroom courtesy of my graduate school mentor. Your loyalty to an institution, an employer or the like should have a limit.
When my oldest was going through the college decision process, it was pretty obvious that UGA would be a bad fit for that child. It was too big and expansive. Nevertheless, we encouraged them to apply because of the Zell Miller scholarship and it was the best fit academically of state schools. They intended to major in Public Health and Spanish. Despite a stellar academic record – UGA did not accept. Besides UGA, they visited a ton of schools – Berry, Emory, Wake Forest, Guilford, Tech, Mercer, Centre, Samford, Furman, High Point, Princeton, and Dartmouth are the ones I can remember. Stanford recruited & accepted them but it was too far. They were accepted at Berry, KSU, Samford, Dartmouth, and Centre. Princeton was a waitlist. Samford and Centre put on the hard sell. Centre awarded them the most money and it came with two guarantees. First, students graduate in 4 years or the 5th is tuition free. Second, you can do an entire semester abroad at not additional cost to tuition except for your travel costs. The oldest chose Centre, doubled majored in Spanish and Biology, graduated in 4 years with did two study abroad experiences, completed a Master’s degree via Johns Hopkins while working for the Dept of Defense on microbiological weapon defense, and is now working on a doctorate in a microbiology at UAB.
The middle child is two years younger and a very talented singer and musician. That kid is more talented at singing than I have ever been at ANYTHING in my life. At 14, a boarding school offered them the opportunity to go away for HS and included a scholarship which would have paid for most of it. Similar to their older sibling, they were interested a ton of schools. Visited Ann Arbor, Miami (OH), Clemson, UNC, Emory, Alabama, Belmont, Vanderbilt, Berklee, Harvard, NYC and USC. However, they applied to one school – UGA. Fortunately, they were accepted with the intention of majoring in music and business. Went to up to Athens and during COVID decided that, they couldn’t learn anything about the music business from David Lowery and folks who have sold a lot of records. Dropped out and eventually found their way to LA and is a moderately struggling musician.
My youngest child is nine and six years younger than their older siblings. By this point, his mom and I had broken up. Also, they had visited a ton of colleges before ever attending high school. When he and I would travel together, I would always ask if wanted to go to visit a school for a minute. We went out to San Francisco and Silicon Valley and we hit Stanford. When we were in Chicago for a week, we visited UChicago and Northwestern. They went with me twice to Boston and we visited schools up there. They went with their Mom to NYC and visited NYC and Columbia. The youngest ended up applying to just four places – KSU (accepted to the honors program), NYC (accepted), Emory (declined) and UGA (accepted.) Much to my surprise because they had never remotely said anything about it, UGA was the dream school. They told me that walking through North Campus on a fall Saturday before one of the few games they attended was what they thought going to college was about. I was stunned. My youngest just completed their freshman year in Athens and loves every minute of it. Only came home one weekend during the year besides holiday breaks.
What I learned while in grad school was born out of this story. My graduate school mentor showed me a thank you note someone who finished the program a little while earlier sent to him. The other graduate was a die-hard Auburn fan. Even though the guy played baseball at Samford, he grew up going to Auburn games and all of his immediate and extended family were Auburn fans. However, after he got his Masters, the most interesting and lucrative job available to him was in the Alabama Athletic Department. This die hard Auburn fan, thanked the mentor for encouraging him to apply, interview and accept a job with the Tide. He even wrote Roll Tide next to his signature.
It taught me that being a fan – even when everyone around you may be a fan of the same team – is still a singular thing when it comes to what might be best for you and your friends and loved ones. What might have been right for David Pollack at UGA is not the same as it is for his son. Support your kid for their decision – don’t expect or force them to think your decision is right for them.
UGA was always in the lead, but my daughter also considered Tech and FSU. I honestly would have been fine with any of the three if it was where she wanted to be. That said, she will be in Athens this fall and I am very excited.
I just said no Florida. I believe that’s fair.