WELCOME BACK TO ANCIENT TIMES: 1959-1975

 

The year: 1959.  Ed Thilenius was Georgia’s broadcaster; Sanford Stadium had only one deck; Vince Dooley was a y0ung assistant coach at Auburn, and he traveled with his team to Athens for what has become one of the most famous games in Georgia football history.  After Dooley became Georgia’s head coach, Georgia beat Bear Bryant’s National Championship Alabama team in 1965; then, Georgia won SEC Championships in 1966 and 1968 (when the opening game in Knoxville became the first college football game played on artificial turf and featured a gift to Tennessee by the officials).   The Hairy Dogs stunned Tennessee in Knoxville in 1973; and the Junkyard Dawgs end-arounded Florida in Jacksonville in 1975, before returning to the top of the SEC in 1976.  During this time, Thilenius was replaced at the WSB-WRFC microphone by one Larry Munson, who celebrates forty years of broadcasting Georgia football games this season (2006).   Here are some of the highlights of the early modern DAWG era; sorry about the sound quality on some of these (as Thilenius said, “I don’t know if you could hear me or not…”).