Glory, glory: ‘God is a Bulldog’ again, but is it true if Lewis Grizzard isn’t here to bark?

Only Lewis Grizzard could do justice to the epic tale of the University of Georgia Bulldogs winning the national championship in football.

Maybe you’ve heard that the Dawgs just beat the evil empire from Tuscaloosa, Alabama, behind a former walk-on quarterback from Blackshear, Georgia, population 3,506.

Stetson Fleming Bennett IV has more names than Uga the high-bred mascot bulldog, but the no-name outshined Bammer’s Heisman Trophy winner for the first Georgia title in 41 years.

Lewis needed to be here for this.

Y’all can say what you want, but nothing big really happens until it’s written about in the newspaper. And nobody wrote about the Bulldogs like Lewis.

I can picture the late columnist from Moreland, Georgia, population 382, grinning beneath his signature mustache.

Lewis was Bulldog to the bone.

For my money, Lewis and Larry Munson, the late radio voice of the Bulldogs, were the actual Dawgs, even if they never wore silver britches or tried to literally bite an Auburn player. As far as we know.

Lewis graduated from the university in Athens, and never let us forget it.

As a nationally syndicated columnist, he was famous for one of those rare occasions that Georgia Tech beat the mighty Georgia Bulldogs.

His column in the Atlanta Constitution the next day was one long strip of white space. All he wrote was, “Frankly, I don’t want to talk about it.”

You have to understand that in Georgia, football is a whole heap more than football.

Erk Russell, the longtime defensive coordinator at Georgia, would bloody his chrome dome butting his bare head against the helmets of his “Junkyard Dawgs” to lather them up for another Saturday of gouging and kicking between the hedges.

When Erk passed away, I said that he understood better than anyone else that a Southern football coach has to be equal parts Bear Bryant, Elvis, Billy Graham, Grandpa Jones, Muddy Waters, Huey Long, Rhett Butler, Jerry Lee Lewis, Stonewall Jackson, Jerry Clower, Jimmy Swaggart, Tom Sawyer, Booker T. Washington, Lewis Grizzard, Sam Ervin, Jack Daniel, Andy Griffith and B’rer Rabbit.

Lewis Grizzard got that.

He once wrote, “I had rather be a brain surgeon than a big-time college football coach. There’s less pressure. Lose in brain surgery, and you can say you did your best, and you still get paid.”

GOD IS A BULLDOG

Lewis had a column in 1980 called “God is a Bulldog.”

That was after the Dawgs beat Florida on a third-and-11 play, down one with only seconds left in the border war advertised as the annual celebration of the end of Prohibition.

Georgia’s Buck Belue hit Lindsay Scott over the middle for a 93-yard touchdown.

“Run, Lindsay, run!” Larry Munson wheezed into the microphone.

Lewis admitted in his column that he’d given up. He was in the parking lot when the miracle happened.

Then came a flash from Atlanta: Georgia Tech had tied top-ranked Notre Dame, 3-3. Tech would finish 1-9-1 and Georgia would win its first national championship.

Lewis quoted “the world’s biggest Bulldog fan” Dorsey Hill: “A tie was a gift from heaven. Notre Dame gets knocked out of No. 1 but Tech doesn’t get a win. God is a Bulldog.”

HILTON HEAD

Lewis spent a lot of time on Hilton Head and Daufuskie islands.

On Hilton Head, he wrote:

“Hilton Head has become sort of a glorified reptile farm for Northerners. All them vans and everything.

“A couple from Ohio comes in a van. They’re always in a van.

“They got on the circle and couldn’t get off for a week. Members of the Rotary Club were out there handing them sandwiches as they rode by to keep them alive.”

He filled a Hilton Head hotel ballroom not long before he died, telling jokes, spinning yarns and singing hymns to raise money for our arts center.

We spoke that afternoon in his villa.

I told him I am from Atlanta and always pulled for the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets.

He said he wanted to go to Tech.

He said he applied, but got turned down.

I was stunned.

Yes, he told me, he didn’t have enough pimples.

To the victor goes the glory.

Run, Lewis, run.

David Lauderdale may be reached at LauderdaleColumn@gmail.com.