How 'Bout Them Dawgs?

By B.J. Phillips

A freshman flash helps put Georgia back on top

With one game left to play in the 1979 season, the University of Georgia and the University of Alabama faced the prospect of a tie for the Southeastern Conference championship. The title carries an invitation to the Sugar Bowl in New Orleans. But under Sugar Bowl rules, in the event of an S.E.C. tie, the team that had been to New Orleans most recently would be ineligible. Thus Alabama, ranked No. 1 in the nation and Sugar Bowl hosts two straight years, would stay home on New Year's Day unless it could win its final game against Auburn.

Normally, such a situation would lead to rejoicing in Georgia. But for all their success in the S.E.C., the Bulldogs had been cuffed around by non-conference opponents. "This time last year," Georgia Coach Vince Dooley recalls with a rueful smile, "we had a shot at going to the Sugar Bowl with a record of six wins and five losses. It was embarrassing. Alabama won its last game, though, and spared us. This year, things are a little bit different."

Indeed they are. With a single game remaining, Georgia is the only unbeaten and untied major college team in the country. Undisputed S.E.C. champions, the team has in hand an invitation to play No. 2-ranked Notre Dame. For good measure, Georgia has replaced Alabama as the top-ranked team in both the Associated Press sportswriters' poll and the United Press International coaches' poll, the first time since World War II that the Bulldogs have led the national rankings. Jubilant Georgians are unfurling bumper stickers that marvel: HOW 'BOUT THEM DAWGS.

The Bulldogs' remarkable seesaw began with preseason events both ridiculous and sublime. Dooley nearly lost six players because of disciplinary infractions. But he gained one player who has, almost singlehanded, put the Georgians on top once again: Herschel Walker, one of the flashiest running backs in the history of college football. The best news is that Walker is only a freshman.

A quiet young man from Wrightsville, Ga. (pop. 2,106), Walker was the most sought-after schoolboy player in the country last year. The 6-ft. 2-in., 220-lb. running back rushed for 6,137 yds. in high school and set national records by scoring 85 touchdowns, 45 of them during his senior year. He was also state champion in the shotput (54 ft.) and the 100-yd. dash (9.5 sec.). Son of a chalk-mine foreman, Walker graduated with honors.

So intense was the recruiting war for Walker that the mere sight of an out-of-state coach in Wrightsville could set off a small panic. When a man named John Robinson checked into a hotel in nearby Macon, local newspapers announced with alarm that the University of Southern California's coach had come to cart Walker away. John Robinson turned out to be a salesman from Huntsville, Ala.

During the spring before Walker's arrival on campus, five players were disciplined when a traditional team party turned rowdy, and a sixth, star Split End Lindsay Scott, lost his grant-in-aid after a shoving match with an academic adviser. The seniors served their penance by doing maintenance work at the school during the summer, and Scott, a junior, decided to pay his own way to play this fall. Sobered by their close call with oblivion, the seniors gathered two dozen players around them and, in the heat of a summer-long drought, ran laps and worked out with weights to enter the season in peak condition. Says Right Tackle Nat Hudson: "We decided we didn't want to end our careers with a season like last year. The coaches told us we had to go out and provide the leadership for a group of green guys. Before the summer was over, we were ready."

The upperclassmen were ready to help Walker, of course, but there were doubts about whether he was ready to help them. Walker had played in the smallest high school division in the state, and the transition to major college play has proved difficult for most players. Says Right Guard Tim Morrison: "I thought it would be a big change for him, going from knocking over 130-lb. high school line backers to running into 270-lb. defensive ends in college. But for Herschel, there wasn't any difference. He's just a bull."

Walker was listed as a third-string tailback in the first game against Tennessee. However, he was put into the game in the second quarter and scored his first touchdown, sparking a Georgia rally from a 1 5-2 deficit. That run was a portent of things to come: seemingly trapped behind the line, he darted between two tacklers, then knocked a third onto his back, and went into the end zone standing up.

He has been the Bulldogs' starting tail back ever since. Says Hudson: "Herschel is what an offensive lineman works for, why you run those laps, push those blocking sleds up and down the field, sweat and grunt in the trenches -- to see somebody run all the way." Walker sees things differently: "I have a lot of help. There's a great line opening the holes, and all the upperclassmen running backs on the team have helped me with hints on how to use those holes, showed me techniques in waiting for blockers. I'm good because the team is so good."

There is truth in that. Georgia, home of traditionally stingy defenses, now has an offense to match. It is led by junior Quarterback Buck Belue, an all-round athlete who was drafted by baseball's Chicago White Sox. The Bulldogs have lost just one of the 16 games he has started.

Walker is the key to Georgia's attack. Going into the regular-season finale against Georgia Tech this Saturday, he has rushed for 1,411 yds., a new school record and only 175 yds. short of the N.C.A.A. mark for first-year players set by Tony Dorsett at Pittsburgh in 1973. Says Gil Brandt, director of player personnel for the Dallas Cowboys: "Walker and Earl Campbell are the only two players I've ever seen who could have gone straight from high school to the pros."

Walker is in no hurry to get there. A criminology major who wants to become an FBI man, he is determined to stay for his degree. So far, he has not missed a class or been late with an assignment.

"Publicity and press clippings won't get me a job. If I'm going to make anything of my life, I'm going to have to work. Be sides, I love going to class and I really like to study." Sometimes Walker sounds too good to believe. Says Coach Dooley: "I think he came from another planet. The kid is as close to perfect as I've ever seen." Perhaps even close enough to make Georgia, by season's end, the nation's un disputed top dawgs.

Reported by Peter Ainslie/ Athens, Ga.

With reporting by Peter Ainslie/Athens, Ga.

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