UGA Football: A New Year, A New Look

By John Frierson
Staff Writer

We’re all eager to see the Georgia Bulldogs take the field again, which, at last, they will do Saturday at Arkansas when their season, delayed and altered by the coronavirus pandemic, kicks off against the Razorbacks.

It will be a regular season like none before it — a 10-game schedule against only SEC teams — and it will be a season with a lot of new: new safety protocols, a new offensive coordinator, a new quarterback, a lot of new offensive linemen, new lead running backs, and some new uniforms.

This season marks the 40th anniversary of the 1980 national championship, and to honor and celebrate that magical 12-0 run the Bulldogs will suit up Saturday in a throwback road uniform, with the red pants and white jerseys. It’s a modern take on what Georgia was wearing on the road 40 years ago, including in that season’s opener at Tennessee when a freshman, Herschel Walker, burst onto the scene.

“It will be pretty cool to be able to go out there in something new,” offensive lineman Jamaree Salyer said. “We wear the red (jerseys) and silver britches every home game and we wear the white and silver britches every away game, so it’s nice for a little changeup and it’s nice to be able to commemorate the 1980 team.

“They did something really special, one of the only teams to do it, so it’s nice to start a season off that way, commemorating a great team.”

Along with the red-and-white road uniforms, Georgia also has added a new black jersey that features a dog collar around the neck, to honor the 100th anniversary of the introduction of the nickname Bulldogs. Both jerseys will also feature a patch on the left shoulder that shows the outline of the state, the “G” and the words “TOGETHER” and EQUALITY” to mark the social justice movement that the Bulldogs have been participating in this year.

The new uniforms, J. Reid Parker Director of Athletics Greg McGarity said, have been in the works for several years, since the originally-scheduled 2020 opener against Virginia in Atlanta was announced. The idea for the uniforms was initiated by Nike and coach Kirby Smart was fully behind it, McGarity said.

The original idea was to wear the 1980 throwback uniform against Virginia, but it wasn’t going to be a surprise. There was a plan for a coordinated rollout of the new looks for this season, with a concurrent marketing campaign, but as with almost all plans in 2020, changes had to be made.

“We were not going to bust out of the locker room with these uniforms,” McGarity said. “Kirby doesn’t want the uniform to be the secret sauce in trying to get his guys ready to play.”

Defensive back Eric Stokes summed up Saturday’s uniforms this way: “We’re going to be excited to put them on, but I also know that we’ve still got a job to go out there and do.”

The big achievement is that there’s even an opportunity to run out on the field and play ball this fall. During the summer, when major conferences like the Big 10 and Pac-12 were deciding to not play football or any other sports this fall because of the pandemic —they’ve both now changed their minds and will start football in November — it looked quite possible, as the pandemic raged on around the country and particularly in the South, that the SEC might have to follow suit.

SEC commissioner Greg Sankey and the conference presidents preached patience, having pushed back the start of fall sports several weeks or longer to give everyone more time to make an educated decision and to see what the virus numbers and testing capabilities looked like in late September.

As it turns out, it was the right move. There will be a full slate of SEC games on Saturday.

Some Bulldogs have already taken the field this season, The women’s soccer team, which last Sunday opened its season with a 1-0 win over South Carolina at the Turner Soccer Complex. Safety protocols were in place, with fan attendance limited to only guests of the players and masks required for those on the sidelines, but otherwise, it felt largely like a normal game and a satisfying Bulldog win.

McGarity said a lot of people deserve a lot of credit for putting plans and protocols in place, among them UGA President Jere Morehead and Bulldogs Director of Sports Medicine Ron Courson, to allow fall sports to happen.

“It’s one of these situations where multiple individuals had to go to great lengths to make it happen,” McGarity said. “You’re talking about from the presidents of the SEC for voting to allow fall sports to compete, to the training staff that had to educate and conduct numerous educational sessions and testing, to the student-athletes that had to totally change their way of life, as well as having cooperation from the visiting teams.”

McGarity did not make the trip to Arkansas, he’ll be watching the game on TV like so many of us. It’s new that he won’t be there in person, but it’s not exactly new that he’ll be watching the action on a screen. He said in recent years that watching the games from the field or his box has sometimes been difficult for him.

“I don’t handle that level of stress very well, so I already watch a lot of the games on TV within the facility at certain times during the day,” he said.

We will all be watching this season opener with a keen eye, particularly how the Bulldogs look on offense under new coordinator Todd Monken, with a new quarterback after three seasons with Jake Fromm, as well as numerous other new faces in prominent places.

“Every game is going to be difficult from here on out,” wideout Kearis Jackson said Monday.  “Of course this game is so important because it’s the first game and we get a chance to show our identity and show what Georgia football is going to be for this 2020 season.

“The guys in the building are excited. We’re ready to go out there and play. … It’s just exciting to go back out after not knowing from the beginning of the year, not knowing if we were going to have a season. Now we can get ready to play our first game in a couple of days. It’s very exciting and we’re ready to go out there and ball.”
Assistant Sports Communications Director John Frierson is the staff writer for the UGA Athletic Association and curator of the ITA Men’s Tennis Hall of Fame. You can find his work at: Frierson Files. He’s also on Twitter: @FriersonFiles and @ITAHallofFame.