Dinners that last for hours, road trips across the country, taking pictures with the kids and the dog—All of these events are synonymous with family. For the Posey family, the Georgia Bulldogs are not just their favorite college football team—the ‘Dawgs are a family tradition.
The Posey’s Bulldog tradition centers around 60-year-old patriarch Bill Posey. A University of Georgia graduate in 1977, Bill received his degree from pharmacy school and has been a season ticket-holder since 1978.
“Since 1996, I have not missed a single home game,” Bill says. “I’ve been going the Georgia games for 38 years. It’s just been something that’s a part of our family’s culture for the entire length of time that the boys were growing up. My wife (Dianne) attended the University of Georgia also so it’s just been bred into (my sons). We’ve been doing this for so long—I don’t know what I’d do on my fall Saturdays if I weren’t going to Georgia football games.”
‘Dawgs games have always been a family event for Bill and his family, especially once his sons Cole and Kent grew up and began attending games with him. According to Bill, Cole and Kent, who work as physicians, began attending games regularly when they were four or five years old. As it holds true at most sporting events, fans are often seen high-fiving and sharing moments with complete strangers. The Poseys have indoctrinated some of the neighboring tailgaters into their circle. For Bill, these tailgating groups have become an extension of his immediate family.
“It’s not only just our family,” Bill says. “We’ve got such great friends over the years that we have met and developed such strong relationships with. When I say it’s a family affair, it truly is. Those people may not be related to us but it’s like a family. We cook together, we eat together, we even plan events outside of the ball games together.
“It’s not always about the actual football games. A lot of times, depending upon who we’re playing that the ball game is not the reason we go. The tailgating is the reason we go. It’s just a lot of fun for us and I couldn’t imagine us going up there and not having those families with us.”
The Poseys drive recreational vehicles up to Athens on Friday afternoons and trek back on Sunday afternoons. The RVs afford them the space needed to take Bill’s grandchildren along. Bill’s youngest grandson is only three months old but attended his first ‘Dawgs game when he was not quite a month old. As new generations of the Posey family tree branch out, the tradition continues to take root and grow.
However, tradition does not always mean sticking to convention. Rather than simply grilling beside an old, rickety truck with a few coolers of beer, sandwiches and fried chicken at the ready, the Poseys’ elaborate approach to tailgating has made them quite a popular fixture at Georgia games.
As the group of tailgaters convene, their 40-foot RVs are set adjacent to each other about 12 feet apart, forming what Bill calls “a giant mall”. Tents run through the giant mall, each sporting a chandelier and a carpet on the ground to create the ultimate tailgate experience.
In addition to their tailgate, the Poseys have developed their own unique concept of “theme meals” on game days.
“Every game we have a theme meal,” Bill explains. “The theme meal usually revolves around whatever the mascot for the opposing team is. For South Carolina, that’s pretty easy—we eat chicken. When we play a team LSU in a few weeks, it’s low country boil. Tennessee is barbecue. We try our best to let it revolve around what team we’re playing and we plan that meal accordingly.”
Bill has a personal favorite theme meal that he and the family put together every other year—a hog feast.
“Every other year, we cook a whole hog,” Bill says. “That’s about a 12-hour cooking and so we normally start that about 12 o’clock or 1 o’clock at night and then cook it until the next day. That’s probably my favorite of the tailgating meals that we prepare. That’s the one I like because that’s the one that I do.”
On a typical game day in Athens, the Poseys wake up at 6:30 a.m. to start their morning coffee before enjoying a big breakfast prepared by a friend of the family.
“One of our good tailgating friends likes to cook breakfast,” Bill explains. “He cooks for just about all of our group. There’s about six families that participate in our tailgating group. He gets up and he always cooks bacon, ham and sausage and that’s his contribution. He doesn’t have any family that comes with him, he comes by himself but that’s what he does. The rest of us all prepare something else. Some people do hash browns, some people do a quiche, fruits and some sort of bread or things like that.”
As Bill points out, the kick off time determines when the game day meal is started.
“Depending upon what time the game is, we may go ahead and start trying to get the main meal ready,” Bill explains. “If it’s a noon game, we don’t actually have our main meal until after the game is over with, around 4:30 or so. If it’s a night game, we have more time to be able to do everything. We usually try to have our meal around 3:00 or something like that.”
At night, the families get together for their customary drinks—mimosas and Bloody Marys. However, there is one agreed upon stipulation.
“We always have to get ready for our traditional drinks,” Bill says. “Most of the girls want mimosas. The guys always want Bloody Marys so we do that. That’s always at 10 o’clock, you have to do it at 10 o’clock. That’s just tradition. From then on, people start coming into our tailgating area.”
With any tailgating family, there are bragging rights to be won over who the top cook is in the group. While Bill’s oldest son Kent admits his younger brother Cole is his pick for grill master, Cole gives his pick to someone who knows best.
“There’s a lot of good cooks in the mix,” Cole says. “I don’t know if I could really identify a single one (as the best). My mom—she’s pretty damn good. Usually my mom is the leader of the theme meal initiative. There’s so many good cooks—me and my brother are pretty notorious for putting on about 10 pounds every football season.”
Cole, 31, insists that while his family cheers loudly for their ‘Dawgs every Saturday, the unity and camaraderie of family trumps anything the game could offer.
“I’ve grown up a Bulldog since inception,” Cole says with a chuckle, “For me and Kent, somewhere around middle school, high school, it kind of changed a little bit for us. Of course, we love the ‘Dawgs and we want them to win every game they play but that’s really become secondary in this whole picture. It’s so much more than just football for us. It’s really just about us spending time with our families. There’s a lot of folks that don’t get an opportunity to do that. We’re incredibly fortunate that at least for seven weekends out of the year every fall, we are with our family for three straight days and we get to have that great time together. I wouldn’t go as far as to say we take it for granted but we’ve just gotten accustomed to doing it—it’s our new normal.”
Their “new normal” only further explains the Poseys’ love for UGA football. Serious fandom has countless rituals and superstitions that come with its dogged territory. For Bill, it’s the 10 o’clock mimosas and Bloody Marys. Cole and older brother Kent, 33, have more quirky game day practices they adhere to on Saturdays.
“You don’t shave your beard in the middle of the season,” Cole cautions. “That’s a definite no-no. If you have an outfit that works, you definitely stick with it. If you’re wearing pants to the first game in the dome, and you win convincingly, you’re gonna have pants on the second game. In Sanford Stadium in early-September, if it’s 85 degrees outside, it’s gonna be 185 (degrees) inside so we’ve learned that the hard way. You’ve got to keep your outfit the same, down to the watch and the wedding ring and everything else. You don’t mess it up—you don’t screw with a good thing.”
Kent adds: “For a long time, I had a certain pair of boxers I would wear every game. Of course I’d wash them in between. I’d also wear the same outfit the entire year which can make for some interesting experiences. When you start out and it’s 95 degrees and then at the end of the year, you have a game where it’s close to freezing so that can present some difficulties but as I’ve older, I may be a little less superstitious than I used to be.”
Superstitions aside, there is one word that ties super-fans together: Rivalry. Whether it is competitive, geographical, cultural or even fashion-based, a good sports rivalry will always represent a big red circle on those ever-glorious, team color-centric calendars. For the Poseys, they all share a mutual distaste for the Florida Gators.
Though the Bulldogs own a 50-42-2 all-time record over their rivals from Gainesville, the Gators were 18-3 against the Bulldogs over a 20-year span from 1990 to 2010 led mostly by former head coach Steve Spurrier. It was after all, Spurrier who once admitted after a 52-17 win in 1995 that he wanted to “hang half a hundred” on the Bulldogs simply because it had not yet been done. Given the success Spurrier had and the success the Gators have had to this day, it is easy to see why the Posey family loathes the Gators.
“Everybody hates Florida,” Cole says flatly. “I came into this thing and really started getting involved in Georgia football right about the time Spurrier started really whipping our (butts). That hasn’t really stopped. In the past two decades, Florida has owned the University of Georgia as it relates to just about everything athletically. You’d like to say that any time an SEC team is playing someone that’s not in the SEC, you’re gonna root for them but I want Florida to lose every game they play.”
When asked about which team is the biggest rival, Bill acknowledges Florida but instead elects to rail on in-state rival Georgia Tech.
“I don’t know if there’s a team now that we play that’s not a rivalry (game),” Bill suggests. “For a lot of people my age, Georgia Tech is probably one of our biggest (rivals). For years, it’s been such a back-and-forth kind of a game and I’ve always sort of despised Georgia Tech.
“Most people thought I was joking, but I used to tell my son (Kent), ‘I’d pay for you to go to Georgia before I’d let you go to Georgia Tech on a scholarship’. But now, I think our most despised rival is Florida. Back when I was in school in those days, we owned Florida. Of course it’s not that way now—Spurrier ruined that for us. You used to say it was good, old-fashioned hate, I think it’s just pure hate now.”
The time-tested family tradition of tailgating and watching the ‘Dawgs has yielded a myriad of moments for the Poseys, from feelings of joy and exhilaration to figurative gut punches capable of rendering entire stadiums inconsolable. Perhaps one of the most interesting thing about sports is how each fan has a different moment that seizes them forcefully by the shirt collar for better or worse.
“I was there for the Immaculate Reception—the Buck Belue to Lindsay Scott (touchdown pass in 1980),” Bill reflects fondly. “We were in Florida at the ‘world’s largest outdoor cocktail party’, which we could call it at the time. That pass will always live in my memory.”
In Georgia Bulldog lore, Belue’s 90-yard touchdown pass with 1:30 left to knock off the Gators is sublime. The victory not only set up a showdown with No. 7 Notre Dame in the Sugar Bowl for the national championship, but it gave the Bulldogs their first Associated Press No. 1 ranking since 1942. The Bulldogs, spearheaded by legendary running back Herschel Walker’s 150 rushing yards playing with a separated shoulder, defeated the Fighting Irish 17-10 to give the Bulldogs their second national title in school history.
For both Bill and Cole, the moment that stung most came this season on Oct. 1. The Bulldogs squared off with the rival Tennessee Volunteers and led 24-14 after three quarters. In dramatic, come-from-behind fashion, the Vols scored 20 fourth quarter points capped off by a 43-yard Hail Mary touchdown pass from quarterback Josh Dobbs to wide receiver Jauan Jennings as time expired to lift the Vols to a 34-31 victory over the Bulldogs.
“That’s the first game that I’ve been intimately involved with that the whole stadium knew the game was ours,” Cole recalls. “To have it end the way it did was just a complete polar swing in a matter of four seconds. After nearly 20 years straight of doing this, I thought that I’d grown out of carrying a football game with me into the next week. I woke up Monday heading to work and I was down. That was a really tough one to swallow.”
Bulldog misfortune turned out to be a blessing in disguise for older brother Kent. In 2005, during a game against Auburn, the Bulldogs surrendered a 4th down conversion on 4th and 21 that served as the precursor to the Tigers knocking off the Bulldogs. The disheartening loss, as Kent explains, came on the day of his greatest gain.
“That also ended up being the day that I met the woman that would become my wife,” Kent reveals. “Overall, I think it turned out to be a good day but at the time, it was a fairly bad day as far as football goes. That’s a moment that always sticks out to me and I like to rib my wife about that. The first three games we went to together, Georgia lost. I told her that it’s a good thing we finally won one or we would’ve had to reconsider the marriage proposal.”
At their core, the Poseys embody what it means to be faithful and fiercely dedicated fans. They all have their favorite players and savant-like knowledge of their coaches and players. Bill’s favorite player was defensive back and punt return specialist Scott Woerner. Kent’s favorite Bulldog of all-time is Herschel Walker, a former Heisman Trophy winner and three-time Consensus All-American. Cole’s pick was a three-way tie between former Cincinnati Bengals linebacker David Pollack, Pro Bowl defensive back Champ Bailey and Pittsburgh Steelers great Hines Ward.
When Mark Richt was dismissed as head coach after 15 seasons at the helm, it was a shot across the bow of the Posey family. Richt took a job as the head coach of the Miami Hurricanes, where he played quarterback from 1979 to 1982.
The university hired one of its own, former defensive back and Alabama defensive coordinator Kirby Smart to usher in a new era of Bulldogs football.
“I am a Mark Richt fan,” Kent admits. “You’re not going to find a better person on this earth than Mark Richt. There does come a time in everybody’s career where a change of scenery is good for all parties involved. He took a program here that was middling, basking in mediocrity when he took over and took it to a level where the only thing that was going to make everybody happy was a national championship.
“Unfortunately he wasn’t able to bring one of those to the University of Georgia but I like Kirby Smart, I think he’s going to have some hiccups along the way but I have the utmost faith that he will be successful in his new role as a head coach.”
For the Posey family, their love for the Bulldogs has allowed their love for each other and those close to them to run deeper than the game. With their nearly 20-year streak of attending Georgia games without an absence, the only thing missing is seeing their ‘Dawgs hoist a national championship as a family—for past, present and future generations.
“(A national championship) would be Christmas, Thanksgiving, the birth of my first and second child, my wedding—it would be all of that wrapped into one,” Cole says. “We all think about it, we all think about how wonderful it would be.”
Bill adds: “I’ve been committed to it for 40 years—I was there in ’80 and hopefully, Lord willing, I’ll be there when the next one comes around. It’s just a point of pride. I am proud to be a University of Georgia graduate, I’m proud to be a University of Georgia fan. I’ve been through every kind of ups and downs you can have with the University of Georgia and I’m still a fan and I will always be a fan. It won’t be just because we’re winning—It’s because we play football the way I want to see it played.”
ITG Web Content
Blood Is Thicker Than Football
Written by Shane Thomas
Photo courtesy of Cole Posey
