The Night Kirby Smart, Mike Bobo and UGA Football Gave Fans a Reason to Believe Again
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ATHENS - In 1997, UGA Football entered the Cocktail Party against Steve Spurrier and the Gators as a massive 18.5-point underdog.
By the end of the night, Kirby Smart, Mike Bobo and the rest of the Dawgs showed what was possible for a program that had been dormant for years.
After disposing of Kentucky, No. 14 Georgia was off to its best start since 1992. And it had been a long, trying five years for the Dawgs. Games against the Gators, Vols and Auburn had come and gone without a win. The Bulldogs had gone through more head coaches (2) than gotten wins (1) in those critical SEC games from 1993 to 1996.
Then 1997 happened. It was along cry from the slog of the 1996 season that saw Jim Donnan’s program open with back-to-back losses to Southern Miss and South Carolina. Four games into 1997, UGA had buried Carolina 31–15 and blown out State 47-0.
Georgia was ranked for the first time since early 1995, but a 25-point loss to the Vols in Neyland seemed to reset expectations. It felt like Georgia was better, but not on the level of the powers of the SEC. After wins over Kentucky and Vandy, Georgia set itself for a fight with the Gators, which had just won the program’s first national title, and had been beating Georgia like a drum since Spurrier arrived.
Kirby Smart and Mike Bobo had been there for the struggles of the mid 1990s, and it was not pretty.
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Bobo was… inconsistent. He had gotten hurt in 1995. He had been benched for Brian Smith. He was up and down, and seemingly all over the place before settling in during 1997. Kirby was a reserve player in the secondary as Bobo was trying to steady himself at quarterback in 1995.
By 1997, Kirby and Bobo were both starting, and both had big days in Jacksonville against the Gators. But they couldn’t do it without Hines Ward, and perhaps most of all without Robert Edwards, who, like Bobo, had a long journey to 1997 as well.
Edwards had been a defensive back, but was moved to running back before the 1995 season. He showed explosion the likes of which was rare even for a Georgia running back. But his 1995 season came to a quick end during Georgia’s tough loss at Tennessee. In 1996, Edwards had a hard time holding on to the ball, but shined against Auburn in the Dawgs’ four-overtime win against the Tigers.
The potential was there for Edwards, and therefore the Dawgs.
Georgia had corrected itself, but heading into that warm daytime game against the Gators the question remained: He Georgia travelled far enough to catch the Gators? That seemed like asking a lot.
Steve Spurrier, who had tortured the Dawgs seven games in a row, was looking for his 100th win all time that afternoon. If the 52-17 win over Georgia wasn’t enough to prove the distance between the two programs in 1995, the Gators followed that up with a 47-7 win a year later as the game returned to Jacksonville after two years on campus.
By November 1, Florida was doing what it usually did - blowing teams out and winning big games. Florida had wins over No. 4 Tennessee and No. 6 Auburn. They also enjoyed a week off before playing the Dawgs. Only a 28-21 slip up to LSU in Death Valley showed up negatively on the Gators’ schedule.
Georgia, as a massive underdog, wasn’t the biggest thing in Florida’s way. That was the annual showdown with the No. 3 Noles that still loomed.
But what happened that hot afternoon in Jacksonville showed Bobo, Kirby and the rest of Georgia what was possible again.
Again, the Dawgs had been through some very difficult times. The program was not where it needed to be - it had slipped so much that Kansas coach Glen Mason, who Vince Dooley had hired to be the football coach to replace Ray Goff, decided to stay with the Jayhawks instead of taking the Georgia job.
Kansas.
It had been bad. But the power of Georgia was always there. That’s how players like Hines Ward, Matt Stinchcomb, Orantes Grant and Champ Bailey ended up in Silver Britches. Kirby and Bobo were hardly prize recruits, but they had, like Edwards, worked themselves into good SEC players.
Edwards and Ward were the reason Georgia won the game. On the second drive of the game Larry Brown came down with a left-hand-only reception from Bobo near midfield. Then Ward hit Brown for a long gain on a trick play.
Those two plays set up Robert Edwards’ first touchdown of the day - a 28-yard run into the sun. Georgia grabbed a 7-0 lead. The Dawgs trailed briefly late in the third quarter. That’s when Bobo got hot, and maneuvered Georgia down the field, and hit Corey Allen to get it to the Gator one-yard line.
Edwards took it from there - leaping into the end zone to give Georgia a 21-17 lead. The Gators wouldn’t score again. Bobo threw three interceptions in Jacksonville, but the Gators’ three quarterbacks tossed four picks themselves. Kirby Smart secured two of them.
Kirby seemed to purposely drop another one after the fact on a fourth-down play late in the game. You could see him thinking through the play rather than being as instinctual as he usually was in the secondary.
Edwards ended the night with 124 yards, and a back-breaking 37-yard touchdown that was one of four he had that night. Ward had 203 total yards, which was a combination of throwing the ball, returning the ball, playing option quarterback and catching the ball.
Ward’s biggest play may have come on Edwards’ 37-yard touchdown, when he collected a slew of Gators with one block to clear the way for Edwards’ run to glory.
The block was epic.
The win over the Gators was the first time Georgia players had the chance to celebrate with fans in the stands of Jacksonville’s new stadium. UGA players may have thought they could win the game, but nearly no one else did. No one really thinks an 18.5-point underdog can win.
But what happened that night in Jacksonville gave Georgia fans, after a bitter run of time, a reason to believe again.