There have been a lot of great Georgia Bulldogs, but very few who needed only one name: Herschel. Herschel Junior Walker was born in Wrightsville in 1962. He was a highly touted football player at Johnson County High School. Coach Vince Dooley and UGA won the very heated Herschel recruiting war. In his first game […]
Known affectionately as the “Mouth of the South, he created a TV and sports empire that dramatically altered the media landscape. Robert Edward “Ted” Turner was born in Cincinnati in 1938. When he was nine, his family moved to Savannah. Turner took over his father’s billboard company after his father’s suicide and began expanding the […]
He was one of only three people inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame as both a player and a coach. Robert Lee “Bobby” Dodd was a four-sport star at the University of Tennessee and was an All-American tailback playing football for legendary coach Robert Neyland. After graduation, Dodd took a job as assistant […]
Ted Turner called them “America’s Team,” but for most of their time in Atlanta they were lovable losers. The Braves played their first Atlanta season in 1966. In 25 years, they made the playoffs twice. There were a few highlights, some great players, like Hank Aaron, Dale Murphy, and Phil Niekro, but the Braves lost […]
He would box, but he would not fight. At the height of the Vietnam War in 1967, Muhammad Ali was drafted. Declaring himself a conscientious objector, he refused to serve. With his case on appeal, Ali was banned from boxing by several of the sport’s governing bodies. He hadn’t floated like a butterfly nor stung […]
Can you imagine Saturday afternoons in autumn without college football in Georgia? It almost happened. On this day in 1897, UGA player Richard Von Albade Gammon was fatally injured in a game with the University of Virginia. There had been a nationwide call for a ban on the violent sport, and Von Gammon’s death galvanized […]
He was billed as the world’s strongest man and, during the Cold War, a convenient symbol of American power. Paul Anderson was born in Toccoa, Georgia and overcame Bright’s disease as a child. A football scholarship got him to Furman University, but he quit and began lifting weights instead. Anderson discovered that he had extraordinary […]
He won the first Heisman Trophy ever awarded to a southern college football player. But Frank Sinkwich might never have played at the University of Georgia if a recruiter hadn't stopped for gas. Sinkwich was born in 1920 in Pennsylvania and grew up in Youngstown, Ohio. UGA assistant coach Bill Hartman was recruiting another player […]
Tiger Woods hasn't done it. Jack Nicklaus didn't do it. But Atlanta's Bobby Jones did. On this date in 1930, Jones became the first and only golfer to win the Grand Slam: the U.S. Amateur, the U.S. Open, the British Open, and the British Amateur. Born in 1902, Jones learned to play golf at the […]
One of the world’s greatest women golfers, Mae Louise Suggs, was born in Atlanta. Comedian Bob Hope nicknamed her “Miss Sluggs.” Golfer Ben Hogan called her the “sweet–swinging Georgia Miss.” Louise Suggs grew up in a sporting family. She began playing golf at age 10 and won eight championships during her amateur career. In the […]
