Sure, we could do a basic game by game recap of the Georgia Bulldogs’ 2024 football season. Just go over the stats and storylines from that point in the season. But where’a the fun in that?
Instead, I’ve decided to recap every 2024 game played by the Red and Black in the style of a different literary great of the past. We begin by revisiting the opener against Clemson in the style of one of the most SEC of Nobel prize winners, great Mississippian William Faulkner. Enjoy.
The orange clad HVAC contractors and their tow truck driving cousins had come down from the Carolina hills, thick and heavy like the August heat that clung to the Atlanta pavement, and to the bones of the men and to the nerves of the faithful who had gathered beneath the searing artificial sunlight of Mercedes-Benz Stadium.
For in August in the Benz there’s a few days when suddenly there’s a foretaste of fall, it’s cool, a soft, a luminous quality to the light, as though it came not from just today but from back in the old classic times. It might have Danny Ford’s hat and Vince Dooly’s tie in it somewhere.
It had been a long summer, and the air was ripe, ripe with a tangle of anticipation and dread, the lot of it suspended in the air, hanging loosely like the first bite of a June peach—sweet but bitter and sharp all at once. It was upon them now.
The University of Georgia, the Bulldogs, the mighty bark and bite of the South, against Clemson, the Tigers who roamed the Spartanburg statistical census area like a myth made flesh, both teams pendant with history and expectation. The field was set, the players lined up like jumpers upon the precipice, balanced between glory and failure, rage and resolution, the ghosts of their grandfathers echoing in their minds, mingled with the hype music of something or someone called Migos. Perhaps he was a Choctaw chieftain. No one in life recalls.
They would not be judged by how they walked, no—these men would be judged by how they bled, by how they took the hits and how they took the ball and carried it across that sacred line.
And so, in the humid, breathless evening, they took the field.
It began like it always does, with a soft murmur of disbelief—whether the players themselves believed in their chances, or if the crowd, caught between superstition and sheer hope, believed that the gods of the gridiron might smile upon them. The roar of the crowd was less of a cheer than a great wave breaking across the shore, and it was then that the game began, with Georgia in their red and black and Clemson in their orange and white, clashing in the first of what would be many moments of reckoning.
The clock was set, but time in such a game is a loose thing, bending and twisting and stretching under the pressure of every blow, every pass, every breath drawn by the men on the field. It is not about time; it is about will.
From the opening whistle, the tension was palpable. Georgia, under the direction of Carson Thessaloniki Beck, who had grown into the mantle of leadership with a confidence not seen in many years, came out swinging. Beck’s will was iron, and his arm a cannon, launching passes downfield like so many cannon balls splintering the masonry of the Tiger secondary into a wreckage of anger and regret.
But it was not just the arm that would define this game, no—it was the way he moved within the pocket, dodging and weaving as if the field was not just a patch of grass but a living thing, a beast trying to trap him within its grasp. Not this man. Not on this day but once. And by then the thing was done.
Clemson’s defense, for all their might, could not find a way to contain the man. Their defense, stout and solid, yielded to a greater force, like a majestic pine meeting the hurricane that heralds its demise. 278 yards through the air. That was Beck’s purchase. And two touchdowns, one thrown to Colbie Young and the other to London Humphrey.
The offensive line of Georgia, solid as the stone walls of some ancient fortress, provided just enough protection to allow their quarterback the time to find his receivers. The ball sailed through the air like a bird struggling to escape the storm, finding its way into the hands of Georgia’s playmakers—wide receivers running routes that twisted and turned with the precision of dancers. Arian Smith caught five. Dillon Bell caught four.
The numbers, the statistics—they do not lie. Georgia’s offense racked up 447 total yards, a mixture of rushing and passing. To the uninitiated any other day it might be seen as an easy victory. But not to those who see, and know, and understand. No, it was an ongoing struggle, a tug-of-war where both sides held firm and neither yielded without sacrifice.
Their quarterback threw for 142 yards, a respectable total in the days when our forefathers strived for glory, but not on this day. The run game, though bolstered by the strength of their running backs, gained just 44 yards—a mere trickle when what was required was a torrent. The Country Gentlemen, whatever a Gentleman may be, for who in this day knows, averaged 2.0 yards per run. It’s not enough. Could never be enough.
It was in the second half that the true test of wills was forged. The game, so tight, so unforgiving, drew out every last drop of energy and spirit from both sides. The Tigers held the Bulldogs to field goals in the first half, an Orange dam that allowed but a trickle. The trickles in the dam tell of a burst in the offing however, and so it was as Young and Frazier found pay dirt, and as the fourth quarter began so too did the exultations of the Georgians, as though they had known this was to happen, but would never tempt Fate by dancing in her face prematurely.
Clemson, now on their last legs, tried to rally, but the weight of their task had already dragged them to the brink. Georgia, sensing the blood in the water, went for the jugular. Cash Jones found the end zone. That was it, the end, or nearly enough to the end that all who saw knew that the end was near.
When it was over, the score had settled like dust after a Peloponnesian battle: 34-3, Georgia over Clemson. The stats were final, but the story was not in the numbers, not in the yards, the interceptions, the sacks. No, the story was in the sweat, the grit, the resilience of two teams who gave their all and left it all on the field. And while Georgia’s victory might have seemed assured to the casual observer, those who watched knew it had been anything but easy. The game had been a struggle—a battle not just of tactics, but of endurance, of will, of heart.
And when the lights went down on that humid August night, when the stadium began to empty and the echoes of the crowd faded into the night, it was not the scoreboard that lingered in the minds of those who had witnessed the clash of titans. It was the feeling of being alive in that moment, of witnessing a game that would be remembered not just for the final score, but for the fight that had defined it.
The South had bled, and so had the Tigers.
Go ‘Dawgs!!!