Lewis Grizzard Wednesday

Lewis had many loves, one of which was tormenting our inferiors at the North Avenue Trade School. 

Georgia Tech Goliath Shown the Truth

 I almost got into a fight in the men’s room at The Omni Saturday night after Georgia’s resounding basketball victory over Georgia Tech.

So maybe I made a couple of comments like, “We beat them in football, we beat them in basketball. All they’ve got left to talk about are academics.”

Tech had beaten us three straight years and, quite frankly, those of us on the Georgia side grow a bit weary of reading about the supposed greatness of the Atlantic Coast Conference, of which Tech is a member.

If you read the paper and listen to the Tech fans, you’d think the  Jackets go to the Final Four every year.

The truth is, they’ve never achieved such loft, but Georgia has.

Back to the near fight.

I was in the restroom in The Omni. I was actually in the process of doing one of those things you do in a restroom when the guy behind me, who was wearing a yellow sweater, began to make disparaging remarks about me.

He said, “You rotten, no-good, gravy-sucking, four-eyed son-of-a-blah, blah, blah.”

After completing what I had come into the restroom to do, I turned around and said, “Listen you yellow-bellied, sap-sucking, slide rule-carrying, pimple-faced, blah, blah, blah, you have no business talking to me that way.”

The guy was big, too. He must have been 6 feet 4 inches, 220. A crowd had gathered by this time. I had no choice but to stand in. To have backed down, even to a guy who was 6 feet 6 inches, 260, would have been a sign of weakness.

I took my glasses off and slung them to the floor and said, “I’m 42 years old, been married three times, had two heart surgeries, haven’t exercised in 10 years, eat too many foods that contain cholesterol, still insist on white bread, have sticks for arms and legs, lose every time I play gin rummy, can’t putt and read a lot, but if you want to go at it, here I stand.”

The guy, who had to stand 6 feet 8 inches and 280 pounds, and probably was a member of a motorcycle gang and had a knife on his person, began to back down.

“I’m really sorry about making those quite disparaging remarks about you,” he said.

“That’s not good enough,” I countered. “I want you to repeat after me: ‘Georgia has kicked our butts in both football and basketball, and it is obvious that Georgia people are better human beings than Tech people.’”

He said, “Georgia has kicked our butts in both football and basketball, and it is obvious that Georgia people are better human beings than Tech people.”

“Now,” I said, “I want you to go from this place in shame. I want you to hurt from the knowledge that the great Atlantic Coast Conference is nothing but a gathering of bed-wetting communists and the University of Georgia is a pinnacle of learning and athletic greatness.”

The guy turned and walked out of the restroom, beaten to a verbal pulp.

“How big was he?” asked my lovely female companion as I reluctantly reconstructed the story.

“Had to be 6 feet 10 inches and weight 290,” I said.

She kissed me gently on the cheek and said, “Let’s go home, Rocky.”

It was one helluva night.

A different meaning of the Georgia-Auburn game

For a long time, especially as a result of calling the Peach State home, the Auburn game was usually circles on the calendar. When you live in and around Auburn fans and other supporters, it’s hard not to get your blood going for The Deep South’s Oldest Rivalry.

Georgia and Auburn is like two siblings going against one another. The thing about siblings is, you don’t always have to like them. That’s the case with the Bulldogs and the Wartiglesmen.

But for me, the Auburn game means a lot more, and something different.

It all started back two years ago, really in the final minutes of the game.

On the late-game pass thrown by an Auburn quarterback that Georgia had the audacity to dismiss for stealing from his own teammates (I refuse to refer to the fluke play by name), when the ball was deflected in the air, I just knew…maybe from the perpetual heartache of being a Georgia fan, that it would not end well. And course, it didn’t.

Now, like everyone else, I was devastated. Our dog, a 45-pound pit mix, was probably also nervous from all the yelling at the TV from the late-game turning of events.

So, of course, a few minutes go by. And then, Mrs. Lugnut Dawg decides that something is needed to make me feel better. At that moment, she tells me that we’re expecting our first child. All I know is that if Georgia would have won and our daughter would have been born a boy, his name would have most likely been Aaron!

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Flash forward to 2014.

On the Friday morning before the game, I was primed and ready to go, already making plans for what time to head to Athens on Saturday for not only the Auburn game, but Todd Gurley’s return. That all changed around 2 p.m.

While at work, I got the call that few want to receive. It was one informing me that our daughter’s trip to see her pediatrician was much more serious, and that the next stop was a trip straight to the ER of the local Children’s Hospital.

21 or so days later, she was out of the hospital and has improved in multiple areas since then.

The funny thing is, when telling Georgia fans about the initial trip to the hospital, usually say, ‘well, it was the weekend of the Auburn game…”

In a way, our daughter has been defined by the Auburn game.

Either way, she’ll be decked out this Saturday from our home in red and black cheering on the Dawgs with us!

Go Dawgs!

Lugnut Dawg

Lewis Grizzard Wednesday: Does Tech’s ‘T’ Stand For Tacky?

Athens – This will end my crusade, at least until next September, to improve behavior at college football games.

After Georgia-Florida in Jacksonville, Florida players strutted in front of the Georgia fans at game’s end and rubbed in their victory by using obscene gestures.

After Georgia-Auburn, a member of the Georgia staff was hit in the head by a bottle thrown from the stands. So we come to Georgia-Georgia Tech here Saturday.

It was the Tech band that decided to show its collective hindparts.

At haltime, the Yellow Jacket musicians rolled out a Georgia Tech logo and covered the logo at midfield in Sanford Stadium that celebrates this, Georgia’s 100th year of football.

“The band,” said Tech drum major Dana Papp, “takes a lot of pride in our creativity.”

Creativity?

What creativity? All I saw was a group of juvenile horn blowers and drum beaters insulting the Georgia crowd.

It was like going to visit and neighbor’s house and deliberately spilling red wine on a white carpet.

The logo was painted on the stadium grass as a means of showing Georgia’s pride in its centennial season. Naturally, Georgia fans booed the Tech crowd.

“It made the people watch,” another member of the Tech band was quoted as saying. “Even if the response was negative, it was great.”

I thought people who make music in public did so to entertain. Whatever work went into the musical performance Saturday was completely wasted.

If those wusses had wanted to do something to make Georgia Tech look good in Sanford Stadium Saturday, they should have put on pads and gone out and stopped
Garrison Hearst. The Tech defense couldn’t, to the tune of a two-touchdown loss.

And speaking of Garrison Hearst, when he scored his third touchdown of the night, he struck the pose of the figure on the Heisman Trophy, given annually to college football’s most outstanding player.

I suppose he was trying to say, “I deserve the Heisman Trophy.”

I happen to agree, and I would like to see him win it. But I’d like to see him handle his acclaim as humbly and appreciatively as Georgia’s other Heisman winners, Frank Sinkwich and Herschel Walker.

And I happen to think Georgia coach Ray Goff would agree with me.

All this bragging, all this rubbing it in, all this show-boating, all this bottle throwing, comes from, I think, this “in your face” mentality in sports.

ESPN uses “in your face” to promote its sports coverage. “In your face” is just another way of saying, “Up yours.”

It breeds anger, and I don’t think anybody who sees it is impressed one bit.

Would the Tech band like to know what Georgia fans said to describe their little prank?

I heard “tacky” a lot, as well as “low class.”

Yeah, kids, you made quite an impression.