Tuesday, October 25, 2016

In praise of the Cocktail Party

I want to pause a moment this week to say how special, how unique, and how intrinsic to College Football our annual trip to the World's Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party remains.

Living in Virginia, with a wife and two young kids, I've not attended in a number of years. But some of my great memories come from those trips.

Hell, some of them even happened on a Saturday.

This game is one of the things that makes the University of Georgia special on the national stage. It is destination football, perhaps on par with anything and everything else in College Football.

I know some are there already, relaxing on a beach. I'm jealous of everything but the Sunday trip home, should things go as they too often have in recent years the last decade the last 20 years since 1990.

In my youth, my friends and I were usually early arrivers. Georgia-Florida week was, in fact, a week.

More than a decade ago my buddy, The General we called him, was the last caller on Coach Richt's annual Sunday call-in show the week before Florida. This was early in Richt's tenure. Maybe even in his first year, because I remember Munson explaining to Richt just what-all the Cocktail Party entailed.

We had played Kentucky or someone the day before.

"Just wanted to let you know, we're packing up the car and heading down tonight," The General said, as the end-of-show music played.

"My God," Munson replied. "You'll be dead by Thursday."



No comments: