The Georgia football team heads to Baton Rouge this week to take on LSU, and the Bulldogs may once again have to “Awaken the Nation”.
Georgia football fans will likely remember this. Some fans outside of Georgia may remember it. LSU fans probably wish they could forget.
It was 2013, and the undefeated, No. 6 ranked LSU Tigers were coming into Athens, Ga. with a lot of swagger. They were looked at as the potential challenger in the SEC West to dethrone Alabama, and the No. 9 Bulldogs were just another step on the way up.
Georgia was 2-1, having suffered an opening week loss to part-time rival Clemson. The Dawgs were hungry, but most around the country weren’t convinced Mark Richt‘s team was deserving of their ranking or all the accolades.
Richt had already begun to develop the reputation of a coach whose teams didn’t get it done in the big game, and brother, this was going to be a big one. It was big not just because it was two ranked SEC teams who seldom met, but there was a backstory as well.
Former Georgia quarterback Zach Mettenberger – who had been dismissed from the program in 2010 – was leading the Tigers. Mettenberger still had connections to the program in Athens, and the wounds were still pretty fresh. Across the field was the newly-anointed quarterback savior of the Red & Black, Aaron Murray.
This one was going to be special.
Sensing that the Bulldogs needed a lift (and before hype videos were practically a daily occurrence) the Georgia football program released a hype video that set the Bulldog Nation on fire. Backed by the Hans Zimmer score to the film Man of Steel, and voiced by a young child whos purity and innocence were the perfect backdrop to the images that flashed on the screen, Awaken the Nation quickly became a rallying cry for the Dawgs.
“Saturday, it’s time to turn some heads. To show that we, the Bulldog Nation, never back down from a fight. To work harder and dream bigger so that we can be the best.” – From the 2013 Georgia Football video, Awaken the Nation
All Georgia needed to do was follow up behind the hype…and on national television, on a sunny late-September day in Athens, that’s precisely what they did.
Beating the Tigers 44-41 in one of the great SEC shootouts of the decade, the Bulldogs put the doubters in their place for at least a week. They had beaten a Top 10 team, and they did it in dramatic fashion, something that would become a hallmark of Aaron Murray’s tenure at Georgia.
Five years later, there is a role-reversal as these two teams prepare to meet again.
No. 2 ranked Georgia is thought of by many as the heir-apparent to the SEC throne, having won the conference championship in 2017, and then coming within seconds of beating Alabama head-to-head for the national championship.
With all of that, it seems the nation may need awakening again, as Georgia is still being doubted. The first half of the Bulldogs’ schedule hasn’t exactly been filled with heavyweights, but they have dispatched of their opponents in grand fashion with a 29.83 average margin of victory. They’re beating the teams they are supposed to beat, and beating them badly.
LSU will be the first real test for the Dawgs. The first time Georgia goes on the road to face an opponent who can match up with them on both sides of the ball.
A pissed-off opponent, at that.
After having their undefeated season abruptly brought to a halt by Florida last week, the Tigers will be looking for redemption and Georgia is the team in that path.
Many Georgia fans – such as Bulldawg Illustrated photographer Matthew Hall – feel like the Bulldog Nation (and the rest of the country) needs to be awakened again. Success can breed complacency, and Georgia along with their well-traveled fans can’t afford to be complacent in Tiger Stadium.
Hall has taken 2013’s original Awaken the Nation and revised it with some current footage to help inspire this new incarnation of the Dawgs.
The players and coaches have all changed. The venue will not be nearly as friendly, and the blanket of red and black will give way to an electric, record-size crowd donned in purple and gold. Not only will the Bulldogs have to awaken their nation, but they will have to silence an equally rowdy and charged-up one.
As so eloquently stated in the video; Ladies and gentlemen, please rise. It’s time to awaken an entire nation.
2013 was special for the meeting between these two teams. 2018 could be heroic. Men of Steel, indeed.