Fall football practice has begun, and the natives are restless—not with criticisms but rather anticipation and expectations. This has been the way it was since shoulder pads were invented.
I, too, have the same “can’t wait” feelings and have been uplifted by the emotions that come with seeing my favorite team dressed out in red jerseys and silver britches.
You may be interested in how those colors became entrenched, which brings about a flashback to the era of Vince Dooley. The red jerseys date to the early 1900s, but it was Coach Wallace Butts who came up with the silver britches when he became the head coach in 1939.
Those uniform colors remained through 1960 when Butts retired and were kept by Johnny Griffith in his short three-year tenure.
When Vince Dooley became the head coach in 1964, he spent considerable time sorting out options for the team’s uniform. He made two significant changes—one was a red helmet to replace the silver ones of the past, with an eye-catching addition.
He added the classic oval black “G”, which would catch on and become one of the classic symbols of college football. The first order of business was when Joel Eaves, the athletic director, called the Green Bay Packers and asked if they were okay with Georgia utilizing the “G,” which was similar to the Packers’ logo, although the original Packers “G” was designed by their equipment manager and looked more like a block as opposed to an oval.
In the process, Vince’s backfield coach, John Donaldson, volunteered for his wife, Anne, an artist to come with an image, which she did. She designed a “G” that fit the oval contours of the helmet, giving UGA one of the classiest decal designs in football.
Best I recall that there was not a lot of carping and complaining about the uniform changes amid a deeply troubled time in Athens. UGA alumni were greatly divided as Butts resigned under pressure and Eaves and Dooley kept to themselves, which was more of an issue than uniform changes.
When the new regime settled in, they were not very sociable, mainly because they did not have time. Talk about keeping the nose to the grindstone, no staff ever was more committed in that sense than the early Dooley staff.
It did not sit well with some of the old-timers that Vince chose to replace the silver britches with white ones, although they were in a minority. Few out there today would know why he made that decision. It was natural that a popular cheer developed among the fans, which was, “Go, you silver britches.”
Although Athens has never been a bastion of liberalism, and in those days, there were not a lot of microphones prevalent (and certainly no amplifiers), the students revised the cheer to “Go you sons of (expletive).” You get the message.
The cheer had become popular with a segment of the student body, and Vince was familiar with the cheer from his days as a scout for Auburn in the era when each team sent assistant coaches to scout the opponents as much as three games in advance of their upcoming game with a particular school. Vince and Eaves were the main scouts for Auburn.
He learned about the cheer while scouting Georgia for the annual matchup with the two teams in mid-November each year. By using white pants, it eliminated the opportunity for the negative cheer.
Vince was a man who appreciated tradition, and years later, he later brought back the silver britches, but there was not a lot of fuss made about it.
However, most traditional Bulldog fans appreciated the good look of the red jerseys and the silver britches, which certainly give UGA one of the classiest uniforms in college football.
At least two National Football League teams modeled their uniforms after Georgia’s: the San Francisco 49ers and the Atlanta Falcons. Buck Shaw, the original coach at San Francisco, told Marion Campbell, former Bulldog defensive lineman, that he thought Georgia’s uniforms were the prettiest he ever saw. When he chose the colors for his first 49ers team, red was his dominant choice, but he went with khaki pants.
When Georgia alumnus Rankin Smith bought the NFL’s new franchise in Atlanta in 1966, he chose red and black, his alma mater’s colors, for the Falcons.
