The Georgia Bulldogs just came off a well deserved National Championship win over hated Alabama Crimson Tide 33-18 in Indianapolis this past January, and the 2022 season is a little more than one month away. Before the games get started, I wanted to talk a little about what college football means to me.

It’s was about 40 years ago when I remember seeing my grandfather wearing his Alabama hat and watching the Crimson Tide on the TV. We lived in South Georgia at the time and I could never figure out why my pop rooted for a team in another state. We lived in Georgia, so we root for the home state team. It wasn’t until later in my adolescence that I discovered my pop was born in Slocomb, Alabama, closer to Auburn, but he was a Crimson Tide fan. So that still made sense.

During that same time, my other pop, who lived in the same city in South Georgia rooted for the team just upstate in Athens, Georgia. That of course, I could understand. At that time he couldn’t pick up all the games on the TV, so he did the next best thing, pulled out his portable radio, opened the antenna, and listened to the Bulldogs on his lazy-boy chair.

I’m 45 years old now and both of my grandfathers have passed, but every time I watch a college football game with my family now, the memory of both grandfathers takes me back to that time of my youth. The time where I would sit and listen to the Georgia games on the radio, hearing RB Garrison Hearst take it to the house. Hearing the crowd go wild as Kirby Smart (as a player) stopped a drive by an interception. Those moments are tattooed in my brain because I was with my grandfather. The recent College Football Championship game between both of my grandfather’s favorite teams would have put a smile on each of their faces, but a bigger smile on my Georgia fan grandfather. All the heartache that Alabama has put on Georgia, for just one night, it was Georgia’s night.

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