An ESPN reporter’s Labrador once crashed a Georgia Bulldogs football game.
An ESPN reporter’s Labrador once crashed a Georgia Bulldogs football game.
ESPN Senior Writer Mark Schlabach recounted this incident in a very thorough oral history last November after a black cat crashing the field at MetLife Stadium reminded people that Monday Night Football still existed.
Schlabach was given the chocolate lab puppy by his girlfriend at the time in the spring of 1996 while he was a student at the University of Georgia, and decided to name it after the current UGA basketball coach, Tubby Smith.
After graduation, Schlabach got a newspaper job with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and Tubby became their roommates’ nightmare, a master escape artist who could open the fridge by himself, stole all the leftovers and regularly broke anything breakable.
Tubby would frequently go on solo road trips to hang out at various fast food joints, very Tramp style. And he loved chasing tennis balls.
Saturday, October 25, 1997 was a gross, wet, muddy day, and the No. 18 Georgia Bulldogs were hosting the Kentucky Wildcats in an SEC East battle at Sanford Stadium in a nationally-televised Homecoming game on CBS (this was the days when only a handful of games would be on TV, and if you made ESPN it was an especially big honor).
Late in the first quarter, Tubby, who had broken out of the backyard and followed Schlabach to the stadium, then followed the marching band inside and then found a gap onto the field itself, took the field after Kentucky quarterback Tim Couch threw an interception and the crowd went wild.
“I’d never seen Uga look that jealous,” Bulldogs tackle Matt Stinchcomb, who’s now an analyst for the SEC Network, remembered in Schlabach’s story of the incident.
(Uga, like all live canine mascots, has to stay on a leash when on the field.)
Tubby was chased all over the field as the radio play-by-play announcer delightedly narrated the action for fans at home,
“That dog played chase with about 100 new friends for a while,” Kentucky offensive coordinator Mike Leach, now the Washington State head coach, recalled.
Some fans and animal control officers used hot dogs to coax Tubby off the field to take him to the county animal shelter, where Schlabach then picked him up a day or so later. Tubby was also featured the front page of the sports section, which is pretty great.
Ultimately, the Georgia Bulldogs won the game 23-13 and went on to a 10-3 record, finishing with a 33-6 Outback Bowl victory over the Wisconsin Badgers.
SB Nation took the time in 2017 to record some of the best times dogs (and a bunch of other animals) interrupted play at various college and NFL stadiums.
While about half the NCAA college football teams in Division I will not be playing this season due to the coronavirus pandemic (which is a major bummer for fan dogs and football dogs across the nation), the Georgia Bulldogs will be playing a conference-only schedule later this fall.
For more on Georgia football, or college football in general, check out our FanSided Network sister sites of Dawn of the Dawg, Saturday Blitz and Southbound and Down.