ATHENS — Alabama football was coming to town in 1976, and then, like now, it was a very big deal at the University of Georgia.
Saturday’s 7:30 p.m. game between the Crimson Tide and the Bulldogs has direct implications on the teams’ ability to make the SEC championship game and 12-team College Football Playoff field.
The current Alabama team is five seasons removed from its most recent national title, but the 1976 version of the Crimson Tide was at the zenith of its SEC dynasty, having won the previous five league titles — a feat that had not been accomplished before, and has not been accomplished since.
But on Oct. 2, 1976, it was the so-called Junkyard Dawgs making history with a 21-0 victory over Alabama.
The win over the Tide propelled the Bulldogs to their first SEC championship season in eight years and provided the momentum for Vince Dooley to recruit and build Georgia into the national championship program it became in 1980.
The nature of the win was noteworthy itself, as Erk Russell’s defense became the first to hold Alabama scoreless since Bear Bryant installed the wishbone in 1971, a string of 63 games.
“Alabama was the gold standard in the SEC, which was our focus, wanting to win the SEC,” former UGA linebacker Jeff Lewis, who led the Bulldogs with eight tackles in the game, said. “... So we knew we’d have to beat Alabama to win the SEC.
“I wasn’t sure we were better than Alabama, but I’d hoped we would play them a good, hard, close game.”
Georgia did more than that, as former Bulldogs defensive end Dicky Clark remembered how Russell’s scheme confounded the Crimson Tide.
“Erk had a defense that was a little different, this split-six defense,” Clark, who had six tackles in the win, said. “Two guards, two ends, three linebackers and a Rover back then, and it was a defense that you stunted a lot out of and brought people in on different angles.
“There were eight people at the line of scrimmage, people were just moving, ends coming down hard and linebackers scraping.”
It was a fired-up environment within a sold-out Sanford Stadium, which held 60,200 on that mild, 73-degree day.
It had been all the Bulldogs fans could do to contain themselves leading up to the game, the campus and townspeople buzzing with excitement.
“I had never been in an atmosphere that intense; it was electric in the town of Athens,” Bob Baumhower, a defensive tackle who was a game captain for Alabama in that 21-0 loss to Georgia, said.
“We stayed in a Holiday Inn downtown the night before, and I remember that as much as the game, Sometime in the middle of the night we started having vehicles and trucks driving around the hotel with cymbals and tubas making all kinds of racket, all night.”
Come game day, Baumhower remembers Bryant telling the players to put their helmets on before they exited the team bus to enter Sanford Stadium.
“That was not normal procedure, but it was wild. It seemed like there were thousands of people waiting for us, some things thrown,” Baumhower said with a chuckle. “The game, for whatever reason, I don’t believe we were ever in the game.
“Georgia had (quarterback) Ray Goff, and I believe that was the best offensive line I played against at Alabama. That team was well-coached, well-prepared and they were ready for us.”
Still, it took nearly all of the first two quarters for the Georgia offense to bring the crowd to full throat, finally getting on the scoreboard when quarterback Matt Robinson scored on a 3-yard run with eight seconds left in the second quarter.
Robinson shared the quarterback duties with Goff, the 1976 SEC Player of the Year, under center when the pass game was needed as opposed to Goff’s mastery running the ground-based veer offense.
“It was like an arm-wrestling contest for the longest time,” Georgia historian Loran Smith said of the tone of the game in the first half. “The game was a humdinger, a slugfest.”
Russell’s defense came up big on Alabama’s only drive inside the Georgia 25 that day, Lewis making the tackle with the Tide facing a fourth-and-2 at the UGA 24 on the first play of the second quarter.
“They decided they’d run a lead play, but our defensive end, Lawrence Craft, was not lined up in the gap he was supposed to be,” Lewis said. “So, I grabbed Lawrence by the back of the belt and yanked him into the right gap, and I think that confused the offense, so three guys blocked Lawrence and no one blocked me.”
Lewis tackled Alabama running back Calvin Culliver a yard short of the marker, the Tide turning the ball over on downs, giving the Bulldogs’ momentum and confidence en route to the 7-0 halftime lead.
The Bulldogs took control of the game with a 10-play, 61-yard drive midway through the third quarter, going up 14-0 when Rayfield Williams scored on a 2-yard run at the 3:18 mark.
Alabama’s wishbone was broken, finishing the game with 49 yards rushing on 45 carries, 190 total yards and 10 first downs.
“We really had them confused bringing people from outside in, and they had not seen that,” Clark said. “Erk outcoached them that day. It was a defense that didn’t have a lot of big names, but the schemes we had that day, the stunts, taking the pitch away, eight men on the line, it became obvious things weren’t working and our momentum built.
“We had them stymied, and they couldn’t throw it.”
But Georgia could, and in the fourth quarter Robinson hit Ulysses Norris for a 6-yard touchdown with 5:35 remaining. The play, coupled with Allan Leavitt’s third extra-point kick of the day, made the score 21-0.
The Georgia players maintain the story of the Bulldogs’ historic victory is not complete without mention of a postgame celebration like no other that spilled over into the streets.
“That was the biggest celebration I’ve ever seen in Athens,” Lewis said. “The students shut down Milledge Avenue, there were so many parties that traffic could not drive there.”
Harvey Humphries, a UGA swimmer at the time who went on to coach in Jack Bauerle’s seven-time championship swim program from 1979-2010, remembered the celebration.
“Milledge Avenue was a four-lane road, and there was no loop around Athens at that time, so 18-wheelers went through Athens on that road,” Humphries said. “No one could get up and down Milledge that night, traffic was gridlocked, the truck drivers were out drinking beer and celebrating with the fans, people dancing on top of their trailers with the music playing.”
Clark is among many who consider it one of the biggest victories in Georgia football history.
“Such a big game, and for coach Dooley, 1975 had been a good year, but before that there were some mediocre seasons, and as he said himself, he had a knack for winning at the right time,” Clark said.
“That win over Alabama let people know we could win the SEC, it was a chance to show how good Georgia was, and it put us in a whole different conversation.”
Indeed, and those who were a part of it are still talking about it today.
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