I’m turning this post over to the estimable Mr. Jason Hasty, friend of the blog, and, more relevantly, UGA Athletics History Specialist at the Hargrett Library. Take it away, Jason.
The UW ‘Dawgs’ thing has bothered me for a while so I decided to look into it as best as I could without having much in the way of UW materials at hand. Fortunately, like our Red & Black, their student newspaper is digitized and keyword searchable. I searched a bit to see what I could come up with. To make the search equitable, I also looked back at similar research I’ve done for our own use of Dawgs through the Red & Black archives.
University of Washington — Dawgs
– The first colloquial use of “Dawgs” I found in the UW archives is from Friday, October 13, 1967:
https://digitalcollections.lib.washington.edu/digital/collection/daily/id/2347/rec/1
This is an advertisement for used books and records. Apparently the $.02 books were “Dawgs”.
– The first use of “Dawgs” in relation to a UW sports team came on Wednesday, May 14, 1997, though this was in reference to the UWT Co-Ed Softball team:
https://digitalcollections.lib.washington.edu/digital/collection/daily/id/760/rec/3
– This op-ed piece from October 11, 2000 seems to reference UW-Tacoma (the UWT from above) as referring to itself as the “Dawgs” while the Seattle campus referred to itself as the Huskies.
https://digitalcollections.lib.washington.edu/digital/collection/daily/id/154/rec/7
– After this, the use of “Dawgs” in reference to UW’s teams becomes more common through the early 2000s, while they still use mainly use Huskies. This page is a good representative of that:
https://digitalcollections.lib.washington.edu/digital/collection/daily/id/1649/rec/4
– Their official UW Athletics website makes no mention of “Dawgs” in the section on mascots:
https://gohuskies.com/sports/2013/4/18/208229209.aspx
UGA — Dawgs
In contrast, our use of “Dawg” or “Dawgs” goes back much further and is easily searchable in the Red & Black:
– The first use of ‘How ‘Bout Them Dawgs?’ in the R&B came on Friday, September 23, 1977:
– The first appearance of ‘Go Dawgs’ came on Friday, September 28, 1978:
– The first occurrence of the ‘D-A-W-G-S’ spelling (but not in relation to sports) was on November 18, 1927:
Again, this isn’t comprehensive research. I don’t have access to much UW material and there might be some obvious digital resource I’m overlooking. I relied on the student newspapers to make up for my lack of UW reference materials.
If nothing else, I hope that this sheds some light for you on the UGA/UW DAWGS ‘controversy’. (Yes, it irritates the life out of me that they use that.)
Thanks and Go Dawgs.
Jason
Whew! I can’t imagine anyone has anything to add to that, but if for some reason you do, have at it in the comments.
Get The Picture 
No matter if UW used it or when, it is ours and always will be. It’s a geographical and cultural term that belongs to us. They could never begin to comprehend the cultural significance of it. We see it in print and elsewhere and it conjures up generations of Southern culture and feeling that is uniquely ours and ours alone. If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery then let them use it.
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This is how I view it. It’s spelled like it’s said in the South. Everyone else is just trying to be cute. Having gone to high school in Carbondale, Illinois, and now living in Indianapolis, I feel compelled to correct the misuse of “Dawg” to describe a Saluki or the Butler bulldog. I mean seriously, is there any dog less a Dawg than a Saluki? And Butler is filled with Midwestern kids with pasty accents. Stop. Using. Dawg.
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I’m not saying anything, though, given we use that logo we stole from somebody else.
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We licensed it and we’ve used it for exactly 3 less years than they have (1961 vs 1964).
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Point still being that we borrowed it from them.
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Karma payback for the Braves stealing the tomahawk chop.
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The Braves didn’t start using the chop until Deion Sanders was on the team in 1991.
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ee:
Yep. In fact, the legend is that it was some Georgia Tech students at the game who were actually mocking Deion Sanders by doing The Chop (since he was from ACC rival Florida State). However, other Braves fans picked up on it and began doing The Chop for every Braves batter.
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That legend is incorrect. The organist at AFC Stadium would play the college fight song of a Braves player for their walk-up music (if they went to college and had a recognizable song). She would play Glory, Glory when Jeff Treadway came up to bat, for instance. So Deion got the War Chant, and fans started doing the FSU chop, it caught on, etc.
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And now the Kansas City Chiefs have stolen it from us.
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Funny how I never hear national writers complain about KC doing the Chop.
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No shit. Glad somebody said that. I guess it is only “racist” or culturally insensitive if is used in the south.
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You should try the google sometime.
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Pretty sure the FSU guy brought it to the Braves. Furthermore, Braves actually have a tomahawk on their uniform, FSU doesn’t.
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The War Chant is related to the spear and the throwing of the spear.
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In 1980 I was in the USAF in South Dakota. One of my fellow missile crew-dogs was a UW grad. During the football season I said “Go, Dawgs!” In front of him. He looked amused and surprised and said something like, “Oh, Georgia fans say that, too? So do we.”
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The guy had a degree from UW and ended up not only enlisted but also a bomb loader? I sure hope he eventually found his recruiter and kicked the shit out of him.
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First of all, there is nothing in the world wrong with someone with a degree enlisting and serving as a munitions specialist. And plenty of the troops earn their degrees, including advanced degrees, while on active duty. The air force has long been among the more educated branches of the US armed forces.
But the co-worker I am referring to was an officer serving on a Minuteman ICBM crew.
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Lol. Touchy. It seems I misunderstood which AFSC you were describing. Good day!
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Eh, one man’s “touchy” is another man’s “defending my peeps.” 🙂
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That’s funny. But USAF in South Dakota 1980 and a “bomb loader” ….dude could very well have been a #2 key man in a silo.
Military job names can mislead ; I was a Pershing II missile crewman and that almost made me sound like an inflight technician.
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Bingo. He was indeed a missile launch officer.
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DMK, your mistake was appending the Air Force as the military.
😉
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Had the same experience up here in MT with a gal from WA I was trying to get. I wrote “Go Dawgs” in an email. She replied back, “You like the Huskies?”
I was like, WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT!!??
Needless to say, I didn’t follow up with that one.
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UW should crank it up a notch and go ahead and start saying, “Geaux Dawgs!”
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Doesn’t bother me. They are on the other side of the country and let’s be honest. With somebody hears “Go Dawgs” in Ohio, they don’t think of Washington.
Oddly enough, what does bother me is other schools lighting up their stadiums to start the 4th quarter. We started it – it’s really freaking cool and now you are starting to see other fan bases do it. For whatever reason – this one pisses me off. LOL
It is one of the many reasons I like night games so much. If you were at the Natty, it helps you understand that we had at least at 65-35 crowd advantage and it made it clear to the Bama faithful that yes they were out numbered as badly as some thought.
The Notre Dame away game comes to mind as well… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-pSqQnr93U
It’s a pretty neat tradition, and one that I do not like being diluted by other schools.
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NGL I was at the Notre Dame game and when the stadium lit up to start the 4th quarter I thought “what a cool ND tradition”. I haven’t been to Sanford Stadium in a while so didn’t realize it was a UGA thing. That’s when I realized just how much we had taken over their stadium.
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Russ…I was there, too! It was awesome!
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In Jason,We trust!
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You’re probably correct about Ohio, but I can guarantee with 100% certainty that would be correct in the state of Michigan.
The UGA takeover in South Bend still pisses them off.
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I doubt anyone in Montana hears it and thinks UW either!
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Damn right!
Go Dawgs!
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Around 2000 I decided to try to learn how to play fantasy football, and joined an auction-style league on the Sporting News website. I scrolled through available league names and joined the Go Dawgs! leagie, and once the season got going came to realize the other 9 participants were all UW fans, and had never heard of Georgia using the word Dawgs before. I thought they were pulling my leg at first.
I learned I didn’t like them, UW, their league rules and points system, online games (“Old Man Yells at Cloud”), or that version of fantasy football.
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I had a shipmate, and fellow Annapolis grad, in ‘94 from Washington who insisted that UW were the “Dawgs.” I think it goes back a bit more than the 90s for them, but nowhere near as long as UGA.
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I’m mad because I made up the phrase .”How bout them Dawgs” in 1976 and I ain’t seen a dime in royalties . I shold have registered the phrase but I was still years away from law school and didn’t know sh*t. I was subsequently at the Cotton Bowl and heard Arky’s soo pig cheer and I double dawg guarentee you that planted the seed for the Do Dawgs, sic em kick-off cheer. One of those statements is true ,,,,you make up your own mind,
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I had a similar situation. In 1982, I was the first person to ever say the phrase “It’s on like Donkey Kong”. It spread like crazy from there. I was too young to think about trademarking it. What could have been, sigh.
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Pay that man his money.
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Shit Happens
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My father would womanize; he would drink; he would make outrageous claims like he invented the question mark. Sometimes, he would accuse chestnuts of being lazy, the sort of general malaise that only the genius possess and the insane lament.
RIP Princess Leia
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“Webbed feet” has made me laugh since that’s how Aykroyd said he identified Belushi’s body (in a skit).
tech grad boss once asked me if my jungle boots had steel toes as they were required in the quarry. I told him I had a waiver from MSHA as I had webbed feet. He gave me the strangest look. Good guy, great friend. For some odd reason he never mentions football anymore.
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I literally told all three of my children when they were little that I had invented the question mark. When they were all in their early teens we were watching Austin Powers and this scene played they all turned around all aghast…”you lied!” Then my middle son said, “so I guess life before 1974 wasn’t all in black and white?”…shit, guess I stole that from the Wizard of Oz…Rick James was right about Colombian booger sugar
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Has the UGA AA ever tried to trademark “Go Dawgs?” They have to at least try, right? Even if it gets struck down, to not try is just stupid. Which also says a lot about our idiot Athletic Association.
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And then I’m going to trademark “gotdam hippies”.
I want my damn money, bitch.
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Are there hostilities towards this particular usage?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dawg_Pound
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I had a roommate from Cleveland while in Athens. When he got down here he didn’t know much about our traditions, but was a huge Browns fan and told me Go Dawgs was something occasionally yelled at their games. Except his pronunciation was “Go Dahgs”. Just like UW, they’re only using the spelling because they think it looks cool. Neither fanbase actually knows how to say it.
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I can almost hear that spelling from my midwestern in-laws. Well done.
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Doing the Lord’s work! Thank you Jason. Put those NW Yankees in their place, trying to steal our Dawg.
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If you ever tried to listen to the Dawgnation podcast you’ll hear the most irritating pronunciation of Dawg possible. Gyooootdaaaam yankee pronunciation on a Southern website. Can they even hear themselves? Makes me want puke my grits n eggs every time I hear it. I just don’t click that on purpose.
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That’ll hairlip the pope…
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“And if that ain’t country…”
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Educational comment: My law school roommate was a former surface nuke officer based out of Seattle in the mid 90s. He said that UW used “DaWgs” with the W being the university’s logo (a purple block W). That would date it to 1996 or earlier, and explain the use of the otherwise southern vernacular.
Emotional comment: Who the F cares?
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They wear PURPLE, for heaven sake!!
PURPLE!!
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Meh…a whole lot of nothing here.
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My late brother was an old-school fan that actually despised the “Dawgs” spelling. He refused to use it and would correct me whenever I did when communicating with him. He would remind me quite tersely that we were Bull-dogs not Bull-dawgs. Good memories.
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