Sanford Stadium’s hallowed ground: A mascot memorial

I’ve met a few legends: musicians, writers, athletes, actors and a coach or three. Among the tops is University of Georgia Bulldogs football mascot Uga V.

All Ugas have a following, but Uga V outdid himself. He made Sports Illustrated’s 1997 cover as the nation’s best college mascot. He’s renowned for lunging at Auburn’s Robert Baker after a touchdown in 1996.

Uga V — full name Uga IV’s Magillicuddy II — appeared in Clint Eastwood’s 1997 adaptation of “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil” filmed in Savannah, Georgia. He played his father, Uga IV. The dog-walking scenes with him took place in Forsyth Park. Owner Sonny Seiler played the judge in the film. As filmmaking progressed, Eastwood told Mrs. Seiler he was going to make Uga V famous.

“Mr. Eastwood,” she replied, “Uga’s already famous.” Indeed, each mascot enjoys the limelight. Each gets full celebrity treatment.

All these years later, my seats in Sanford Stadium let me look right down the east goal line straight into Uga XI’s permanent custom-built doghouse, a gift from the Bahamian Bulldog Club. Boom, as Uga XI is known, sleeps a lot. When his glory, glory Georgia days end for good, he’ll sleep in the mausoleum diagonally across Dooley Field from the stadium doghouse.

I paid my respects to past mascots during the Auburn game. Walked over to hallowed ground, the Uga Mausoleum marble wall. The site includes crypts for each mascot, bronze plaques with epitaphs and a life-size bronze “generic” statue of Uga — pronounced ug-uh for non-Dawg types. Every Uga in the bloodline stretching to Uga I in 1956 rests here. The university places fresh flowers at the graves before home games.

Other college football stadiums have interred mascots in or under them, but Georgia’s Sanford Stadium is the only major college program that buries its mascots as a part of the stadium itself. Mississippi State’s Davis Wade Stadium/Scott Field buried Bully I (the first official “Bully” mascot, killed by a campus bus in 1939) beneath the players’ bench at the 50-yard line. Other Bullys have had their ashes spread on the field or been buried at or near the stadium.

Oklahoma’s Gaylord Family Oklahoma Memorial Stadium/Owen Field buried Mex, a terrier that served as OU’s live mascot from 1919–28, in a small casket after the university suspended classes for his funeral. The exact spot is unknown due to renovations.

Not strictly in the stadium is Texas A&M’s Kyle Field’s Reveilles, collie mascots. They’re buried in a dedicated memorial cemetery at the north end outside the stadium, oriented toward the field, with a miniature scoreboard so they can “follow” games.

The Uga line’s path to legend began in 1956 when Georgia law student Frank “Sonny” Seiler and his new wife Cecelia received a white English bulldog puppy as a wedding gift. Cecelia hand-sewed him a little red jersey from a child’s T-shirt with a black felt “G” on the front.

On the day of Georgia’s first home game that year against Florida State, they took the dog to the Sigma Chi house for a pregame party. They had no plans to bring him into Sanford Stadium. As Sonny later put it, after a few iced teas, the group decided, “Let’s take him to the game.”

The ticket-takers let them in, and the puppy caused a stir. Coach Wally Butts liked what he saw and asked Seiler if the dog could be the team’s official mascot.

A law-school friend suggested the name “Uga,” a play on the university’s common abbreviation. As Paul Harvey would say, now you know the rest of the story.