Memories Of First College Football Game Attended In Person

While I was born in 1971 I don’t have as many memories of that decade as I do the following one.

However, there was certainly one event from the 1970s which remains vivid decades later. The date was Oct. 13, 1979 and the place was Athens, Georgia. More specifically the location was Sanford Stadium where the University of Georgia plays its football games.

On that date a young football fan had the chance to attend his first live college game. Certainly watching college football on television was entertaining but I was about to learn how there was nothing like being there live.

Before that date I had only attended high school football games. While that is also a great experience I really had no idea what I was going to see unfold that fall afternoon in the Classic City.

The Bulldogs were not doing that well in 1979 and entered the LSU game with a 1-3 record after some close, disappointing losses. UGA had earned its first win of the season the week before against Ole Miss.

LSU rolled into Athens with a Top 20 ranking and certainly was the favorite to earn the win on this day. We will discuss the outcome of the game later.

For an eight-year-old it was like experiencing a dream to be at the stadium that day. I don’t think I had ever been around so many people. Everything was a sea of red and black. The playing field at Sanford Stadium was a perfect shade of green. The white painted numbers seemed to jump off the playing surface.

The Red Coat band played loud and to perfection. The hot dogs we ate tasted great. The sky was as blue as the ocean.

My father and I were among the first to enter Sanford Stadium that day. No doubt he wanted me to get the full experience. We sat in the bleachers in the end zone (this being in the days before the stadium was enclosed.)

When we first took our seats I quickly noticed how big (and at the time empty) the stadium was. I asked my father if more people were coming and he said all seats would be filled by the time the game started.

How right he was. I don’t remember much about the actual game. At that age I was too taken in by all the sights. I remember wanting another hot dog and a Georgia hat.

As it turned out, UGA won this game defeating LSU 21-14 before 60,000 fans.

That day would become the first of a long tradition for my father and I. We would go to one game a season for several years. The LSU game was one of the better ones we saw from a football standpoint.

Most of the time we got to see the Bulldogs play William and Mary or a similar opponent.

Going into the 1982 season as we looked over the schedule to determine which game would have tickets available one opponent jumped out. UGA would be playing Brigham Young, a program which had started to gain national attention in recent years.

I enjoy watching the Cougars play because they threw the football almost every down. By 1982 UGA was deep into a very successful run. Georgia defeated BYU 17-14 that day but it was not easy as the Bulldogs had to stop future Hall of Fame quarterback Steve Young.

The LSU game in 1979 and the BYU game in 1982 were certainly the most competitive ones we saw. The others were more along the lines of 49-3 which gave my father a legitimate reason to leave early to “beat the traffic” as he put it.

Once I got older I continued the tradition of going to a game each year. However, that eventually ended when more and more games were televised and the “fun” of battling the game day traffic and the game day crowd just wasn’t worth it. The last few times I attended a game saw me in the press box but the battles of the crowd and traffic remained.

Still, that day in 1979 helped cement what has been a lifelong love of college football. We are just a few days away now from the 2018 season and I am as excited for it as I was when I walked into Sanford Stadium 39 years ago.

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