Is God a Bulldog?

Douglasville, GA. – I, Blogging Dawg, one of the tri-county’s biggest Bulldog fans, will be leaving Tuesday morning, bound for Jacksonville, where Georgia's young football team next appears. Santa Claus Dawg will ride shot-gun.

"I don't think you can get from Douglasville to Jacksonville," the parish Priest explained to me yesterday.

"You can change buses in Macon and St. Simon’s," I answered.

"You aren't going a little early?"

"Early?" I screamed back. "I haven't worked since we dodged that bullet in Nashville, and I haven't slept since Tennessee. You expect me wait around here when we play those stinking swamp lizards in only six more days? The only reason I haven’t left yet is I’m scheduled to cut the grass at the rectory tomorrow night!"

Has my priest as bumped his head? This is a very complex and delicate matter. As a matter of fact, some call it a question of religion.

Georgia comes into the game with two East division losses, and barely ranked in the BCS poll. Let’s face it folks, we ain’t gonna play under the Dome come December. But this ain’t about just playing for the conference Championship. It’s our way of life against theirs. It’s about loving your team and not being a closet Dawg. It’s about exercising the demon of the ol’ ball coach. It’s getting the monkey off your back. It’s about being Bulldawg Born and Bulldawg Bred. It’s about getting back on track to our history of smacking down those Camero driving, jort wearing, corn-dog smelling, sons of female dogs.

I will arrive early Tuesday afternoon, which some hardcore Dawgs will consider fashionably late. Others, however, will question my ancestry and loyalty at not arriving this past Sunday or before - since we had a bye last week. I will have to dodge some of the Bulldawg Nation from cities like Marble Hill, Toccoa, Bill Arp, and Sugar Hill who will be drunker than a four-eyed owl before they cross the Florida line.

As my good friend Calhoun Dawg put’s it, “The Georgia-Florida game is the annual celebration of the repeal of prohibition."

We will wait until Thursday to get into our serious pre-game drinking, however. We’ll probably go to Singleton’s on Wednesday and fill up on collards and I think we all know how hard it is to drink on a belly full of collards.

I think I can say without fear of charges of blasphemy that the whole thing is a religious experience. "Deacon Dan" Magill, the "Baptist Bulldog," will read a prayer to the Georgia faithful in which he will beseech the Almighty to help the Bulldogs "smite the Florida Philistines."

Then there is the game itself. I remember Lewis’s column back in 1980 when Georgia got a miracle in the form of a 93 yard strike from Belue to Scott for the game winning touchdown with only seconds remaining. To cap it off, there was the astounding news from Atlanta. Georgia Tech had tied No.1 Notre Dame.

"That tie was a gift from Heaven," said Barker Dawg. "Notre Dame gets knocked out of number one but Tech did not get a win. God is a Bulldog."

Verily.

After all, he did make the sunset Red, and the night Black.