Georgia Bulldogs Countdown to Kickoff: Day 42
The Georgia Bulldogs had to break their 41-year National Championship drought at some point. But before this title drought, the Dawgs had another one that was nearly as long.
Luckily for college football fans back then, Twitter didn’t exist. Did people talk smack about Georgia fans when they were spinnin’ vinyls in the 70’s?
Did they shout at them in the school parking lot, or leave them messages on their answering machines that just said, ‘1942!’?
I don’t know the answer to that. It is a considerable mystery.
But these Dawgs are champions, too. And their success on one very long bowl trip predicted the dawn of a championship revival 75 year later.
The Georgia Bulldogs take on the Rose Bowl
The 1942 Georgia Bulldogs schedule had the usual suspects on it.
Florida (Georgia won, 75-0, in Jacksonville, Fla.).
Kentucky (Georgia won, 7-6, in Louisville, Ky.).
Alabama (Georgia won, 21-10, at Grant Field in Atlanta, Ga.)
Georgia also played some non-familiar foes in this fateful football season:
The Dawgs beat the Jacksonville Naval Air Station Flyers, Furman and Chattanooga by a combined score of 94-7.
However, Georgia did lose to Auburn, 27-13, at A. J. McClung Memorial Stadium in Columbus, Ga.
History would repeat itself, somewhat, 75 years later.
Similarities between the 1942 National Championship season, and the 2017 season
Georgia’s 2017 team would also lose to Auburn in the regular season. With a shot at revenge in the SEC Championship game, the Dawgs took advantage and made the College Football Playoff.
Their reward was a journey to Pasadena, California, for a Rose Bowl return trip that originally took place in 1942 and 1943.
Georgia’s 1942 National Championship team traveled to California by train. The Dawgs beat UCLA in its own stadium to claim the national title on January 1, 1943.
Frank Sinkwich won the Heisman Trophy that season. Charley Trippi stole the show in the season finale, though, with 25 carries for 130 yards.
Trippi told me a few years ago that a lot of his Dawgs teammates were so smitten by Tinsel Town and the celebrities they met in California, they didn’t return home for a while after the game.
The 2017 Dawgs flew in first class, and had to come home after scoring way more than nine points. The 54-48 double-OT win vs. Oklahoma set a combined scoring Rose Bowl record of 102 points.
Unlike the 1942 Dawgs, they finished as national runners-up.
Wally Butts’s 1942 Dawgs aren’t just a year on a banner in Sanford Stadium. It was a real team made up of real WWII heroes and real champions.
They set the stage for future Georgia Rose Bowl Champions and National Champions.
And they sure knew how to fit right in to a California party.
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