I’m not trying to be critical here about Bill King’s list of the ten best Georgia games ever, as I’m in agreement with plenty there, including the past Rose Bowl game being at the top, but how in the world do you compile such a list and leave the 1980 Georgia-Florida game off entirely?
It’s such a strange omission I had to go back and check it again to make sure.
What do you guys think?
Get The Picture 
Nekulturney.
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Maybe Bill should quit posting after gobbling Ambien. I hear it leads to embarrassing posts.
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Bill King is a doofus. Any list of great Georgia games that doesn’t include the 1980 Cocktail Party is like a list of great BBQ restaurants that doesn’t include Southern Soul or Fox Brothers (to name a couple).
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No losses on a list like that.
LSU game doesn’t belong on there.
1980 UF has to be on that list.
17-10 over ND is No. 1 until we get another title.
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The Sugar Bowl doesn’t happen without the Cocktail Party. Until we win another national title, the 1980 Party will be #1 on my list with the 2018 Rose Bowl 2nd (but I can see your opinion).
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We were pretty lucky to beat Tennessee, Clemson, and South Carolina that year too. I feel we’ve been paying for all the fortuitous bounces of the ball we got ever since.
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Yep, the curse of Herschel
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Looked at his article and the criteria for selection. The omission of of the 1980 cocktail party is an egregious mistake. Herewith a copy-and-paste excerpt from Lewis Grizzard’s November 10 column on the game:
“I think I can say without fear of charges of blasphemy that the whole thing was a religious experience.
“Deacon Dan” Magill, the “Baptist Bulldog,” read a prayer Saturday morning to the Georgia faithful in which he beseeched the Almighty to help the Bulldogs “smite the Florida philistines.”
Then, there was the game itself, Georgia behind 21-20, 93 yards away, time running out.
“We need a miracle!” Screamed Dorsey Hill, now fortified with more than collards.
Georgia got its miracle. Buck Belue to Lindsay Scott, who ought to get his scholarship back.
If that wasn’t enough, there was the astounding news from Atlanta. Georgia Tech had tied No. 1 Notre Dame. Surely, Georgia will be ranked first in America when the ratings are released.
“A tie was a gift from heaven,” said Dorsey. “Notre Dame gets knocked out of number one, but Tech doesn’t get a win. God is a Bulldog.”
Bill King wishes he could write that sort of column.
I edited a little to apply emphasis.
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I just read it as well and your right sir. Thank you Dylan’s booty for for going straight to the gospel to make your (and my) case for the 1980 WLOCP.
For my dad and grandfather I’ll throw in 1929 Yale, the ‘43 Rose Bowl and ‘59 Auburn. Bottom line for me is that we’re finally adding to the list…it’d been stagnant for awhile.
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Writes for the AJC, what do you expect?
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Rip Shultz and Bradley all you want, but Bill King is in a league of his own. How this semi-literate ass clown has a job is beyond me.
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Bill King has a job because people love him or hate him enough to click him or talk about him good or bad on message boards to drive even more clicks his way. He strikes me more as a Chuck Dowdle type – a homer looking more backward than forward – a fairly benign back-bencher rather than someone worthy of profane name calling. But message boards and blogs attract all kinds I suppose.
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Trash article, skip it. Not worth your time.
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Bill doesn’t advertise himself as a paid expert columnist but a voice of DawgNation who worked for AJC. Excluding 1980 Jax has to be an honest oversight or he wasn’t there. He’s one heck of a name dropper for sure.
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Not on the list? WTF? Without that one-no Sugar Bowl. To add to the bunch, I do not read King as his stuff is mostly troll bait.
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That was a terrible article. I had an embargo against Bill King prose going for over 10 years until I clicked on an unassuming blog link a month or so ago that treacherously led me to one. Since that time, out of sheer boredom and desperation for Dawg news, I have clicked on a few of his articles. I was slowly forming the opinion that, while still terrible, he had gotten slightly better in the last 10 years. “My buddy Joel said…then my buddy Frank said…” Dude. Seriously though, it’s a good topic. If I was rating games, I’d have to rate them by importance and/or prestige brought to the program and obviously only wins, I don’t need a list of our most exciting losses. With that said, I’d go with:
The 1981 Sugar Bowl (though this was a stinker of a game in the aesthetic sense, winning it produced our only undisputed national championship, I hear y’all about 1980 Florida, in recognizing the 81 Sugar Bowl #1, I am implicitly and expressly giving major homage to the Miracle on Duval Street. It’s in my top 10 in it’s own right, it made the ultimate prize possible, but the prize was won in the 81 Sugar Bowl against Notre Dame.
The 1943 Rose Bowl win against UCLA. It was the Rose Bowl, the grandaddy of them all, back when there were only 3-4 bowls. Further, winning it secured the program’s only other consensus national championship. Also Frank Sinkwich, played in the game, our only other Heisman winner besides the GOAT, along with the legendary Charlie Trippi.
The 2018 Rose Bowl. See my comments above about the Rose Bowl generally. In addition to being Top 5 in importance, this is easily one of Georgia’s most objectively thrilling victories (second only perhaps to the aforementioned Miracle on Duval Street, other honorable mentions in the thrilling category would be the 1978 Tech game, the 1996 Auburn game, the 1997 Tech game, the Hobnail boot game, and the 2002 Auburn game). Back to the importance of this game, obviously it gave us our first title shot in 36 years, but it was also I think our program’s only victory over THE Heisman Trophy winner, in the sense that Baker already had the trophy. We’ve beaten several Heisman trophy winners the same year they won the trophy (I can think of Spurrier in 66, Rogers in 80, and Tebow in 07 right off, though there could be more). Also it was a showcase for the talents of several of the most recent inductees in the pantheon of the most elite Bulldog greats, Chubb, Michel, and Roquan.
The 1984 Cotton Bowl- we denied #2 Texas the national championship in Texas, on New Year’s Day. Also it was the final game for several Bulldog greats who came in with Herschel Walker, including Terry Hoage, Freddie Gilbert, and John Lastinger. It’s always 10 to 9 in Texas.
The 1985 Florida game. It’s Florida. It was the first time they were ever ranked #1, and we beat them like a circus monkey. It is also to my knowledge the last time we beat a team ranked #1. We can argue who Georgia’s biggest rival is, the Gators would undoubtedly get quite a few votes, some would say it’s always Tech, and Auburn’s up there too but as far as high profile for the program, known to all college football fans, even in Montana, the perennially nationally televised Georgia-Florida game, as one of college football’s two continuous neutral site games (Texas-OU being the other) is always the biggest, and this was our biggest upset ever in that game.
Honorable Mentions: The Miracle on Duval Street, 1980 Florida; 1942 Tech, beat #2 Tech 34-0 to earn the 1943 Rose Bowl bid; 1960 Orange Bowl- Fran Tarkenton and the 59 SEC Champs win the program’s only Orange Bowl; 1965 Alabama game- we beat the eventual co-national champions on the infamous flea flicker; 1965 Michigan- we beat a top 10 Michigan team in Ann Arbor; 1976 Alabama, we blanked the defending national champs in Athens 21-0; 1982 Auburn (Herschel vs. Bo), “look at the Sugar falling out of the sky”, it was the defacto SEC Championship game (before there was one); 1986 Auburn between the hoses; 1997 Florida (our only win over Spurrier at Florida, it snapped the 7 game losing streak to the Gators; 2002 Auburn- finally won the East; 2002 SEC Championship (first title in the championship GAME era); 2005 SEC Championship- Shockley’s upset champions; 2008 Sugar Bowl- pissing in the sports media’s cornflakes and denying Hawaii perfection; 2012 Florida beat the #2 Gators- one of the best Bulldog teams, if not THE best never to win the SEC Championship; 2017 Notre Dame; 2017 SEC Championship game.
TL;DR
Bill King sucks, my top 5 all time UGA games are the:
1. 1981 Sugar Bowl;
2. 1943 Rose Bowl;
3. 2018 Rose Bowl;
4. 1984 Cotton Bowl;
5. 1985 Florida game.
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Top 3 for me, in order:
1) Clemson game with Butler’s 60 yard FG at the end of the game. Listened to that one on the radio. Never new if it was good or not until after they came back from the station break. Munson was too caught up in it with emotion & never let us know. Longest 3 minutes of my life, never been so mad and happy with him in the same game.
2) Got to be the ’80 Florida game, a miracle game….just like the one above.
3) Rose Bowl….they never gave up. A credit to the players & staff. Definitely the best game all year (all teams). Kirby & staff are building something, you can just feel it.
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#1 was my first Georgia game
#2 was my last Georgia game (until Austin Peay)!
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Damn. The 1980 Florida game was so unforgettable that they play “Run Lindsey” every year on CBS during warmups. Florida fans complain about it.
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I can recognize a Georgia loss as a great game, but there’s no way I could include one in a list of the best games ever, especially with a ten game limitation. Ole Bill needs to drop the 2012 SECCG and add “Run Lindsay” to his list. But, as Dalton said, opinions vary.
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I think you can pretty easily leave out the 2005 SEC Championship Game win over LSU in favor of the 1980 Georgia-Florida game.
I mean, heck, I’d put the 2002 SEC Championship Game win over Arkansas in the Top Ten over the ’05 game. Sure, the ’05 game was an upset but they were both blowouts and the ’02 game broke a long drought and established the momentum for the early half of Richt’s tenure. The 2002 season was my favorite of all my years as a Dawg fan until that 2017 bunch eclipsed it.
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’02 Auburn > ’02 SECCG
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I attended the 2015 Usc game in Athens.
Dogs hanging 50 on Spurrier and sending him packing to retirement with a 4th string UVA QB setting consecutive passes & pass completion % records on his ass was sweet candy.
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