13 with: “Great Bulldogs Reign in Tough SEC and the Whole Town Goes Wild.”Ī kicker over a headline on a front page Grizzard story about the Dawgs’ season-opening victory over Mississippi State in 1967 offered: “Yabba-Dabba-Doooo-ley!” Another in a South Carolina game report crowed: “Cock-a-Dooley-Do!” 28, 1965, declared: “Georgia Clobbers Tech Dooley for President!!!”Īfter the Bulldogs wrapped up the 1966 SEC championship with a victory over Auburn, Daily News readers were greeted on Nov. The paper was known for its colorful headlines (Grizzard once told the story that the paper’s editor, Glenn Vaughn, prepared a mock front page in case the Second Coming took place in Athens, including the headline: “HE’S BACK!”)īut it was with its Georgia football headlines that the Daily News really excelled.Īfter a 1965 win over Clemson, the front page bellowed: “Bulldogs Cook Tiger Stew.” And, after Vince Dooley’s second straight win over the Yellow Jackets, the paper’s front on Nov. Game days aren’t quite the same in Athens without those Harry Dog front pages, just like coverage of the games isn’t quite as entertaining as when the now defunct Daily News, which dubbed itself “The People Paper,” had a 19-year-old UGA journalism student named Lewis Grizzard on its staff and threw journalistic objectivity to the wind in leading the hometown cheering section. His sister, Angie Smith Cain, told the Athens Banner-Herald a few years back that she remembers she and her brother would look forward to seeing “what Harry Dog was doing to Georgia’s opponent that day. “As a kid, that’s how I started my Saturdays - I’d to run get the paper and see Harry at top of the fold,” Kirk remembered. Smith’s son Kirk, who continues running his dad’s old ad agency in Athens, The Adsmith, told me he’s “quite flattered that people still remember” his father’s work. Smith died in 2004, but his Harry Dog lives on in the memories of UGA fans.

He might be getting ready to greet a Gamecock with a frying pan, a bag of flour and some shortening, or wearing the Florida Gator mascot pinned to his jersey, asking, “What d’ya think? Do I look too preppy?”

While Hairy Dawg was designed to be an intimidating but silent presence, his cartoon cousin Harry tended to pummel his victims with quips as well as whatever weapon his big paws were holding. (Courtesy of Kirk Smith)Īnd, on game days for more than 20 years - from the mid-1960s through the early ’80s - the paper unleashed scores of kids on the area around Sanford Stadium, peddling copies of the Saturday edition, its front page emblazoned with the red-and-black adventures of Harry Dog, a cartoon Georgia Bulldog created by a local ad man named Don Smith. Kirk Smith says this drawing by his dad of Harry with the Clemson mascot is a particular favorite.

Harry dirty dog book