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For Perry Dreher, every fall Saturday in Athens starts at 5 a.m.
That 5 a.m. wakeup call is usually from a downtown Athens hotel, where he and his mom, who have had Georgia football season tickets for 20 years, check in on Friday night. Dreher drives from Macon to pick up his mom, in Gray, Ga., and they drive the rest of the way to Athens. They settle in with a low-key Friday night and get to sleep between 9-10 p.m.
But by the time the sun comes up on Saturday morning, it’s go-time.
The routine for Dreher and the self-named “Sic ’em Squad” tailgate group includes a trip to Publix for the chicken tender tray, driving to the Vet Science Quad on UGA’s campus and then setting up the tables, the trio of 55-inch TVs and making sure the sound system is ready to go (the pregame playlist was settled on months earlier). It’s had its tweaks since Dreher started hosting a tailgate in 2015, but one thing has been a common denominator.
“8:30, we’re ready to go,” Dreher said.
Mind you, it doesn’t matter if Georgia is kicking off at noon or 7 p.m. Dreher’s tailgating commitment mantra is one that’s borrowed from fellow Georgia graduate and PGA Tour golfer Kevin Kisner. “Ain’t no hobby.”
For Dreher and tens of thousands of others, Sanford Stadium is home. Sure, it helps the game day atmosphere when Georgia is winning national championships like they did in 2021 and 2022, but for Dreher, he fell in love with fall Saturdays in Athens nearly 2 decades before UGA ended the 1980 jokes and a decade before he became an undergraduate.
A 9-year-old Dreher vividly remembers his first of many Sanford Stadium experiences.
“The first game, gosh, we were playing Middle Tennessee State in 2003,” Dreher said. “I just remember going to that game and the second that we got to our seats, I was hooked. I was like, ‘This is my new obsession. This is my thing.'”
Dreher’s seats have changed over the years. He’s been in the upper level and he was an end zone student section season-ticket holder. But now thanks to a connection with former UGA walk-on Candler Cook, his seats are tough to beat. The Dreher season tickets are 12 rows up in Section 131, AKA, on the 50-yard line. “I think it’s the best seat in the house,” he said.
Dreher has been fortunate enough to witness plenty of great Georgia moments. The 2016 Jacob Eason touchdown pass to take the lead late against Tennessee stands out (though he’d like to forget the “Dobbs Nail Boot” play that happened minutes later to end the game). He’ll never forget the roar of Sanford Stadium after Justin Scott-Wesley caught a long touchdown pass from Aaron Murray to put away South Carolina in 2013.
But ask Dreher about his favorite moment in Sanford Stadium and there’s one that stands above the rest.
“Can I just say the whole 2022 Tennessee game?” Dreher said.
Of course. After all, that’s when the Vols entered Sanford Stadium as the No. 1 team in the first Playoff poll while the defending national champion (and undefeated) Dawgs were No. 3, according to the selection committee. Georgia proceeded to hold the nation’s No. 1 offense without a touchdown for the first 55:45 and cruised to a rain-soaked victory.
“From start to finish,” Dreher said, “the way the crowd was, how locked in it was, how good the team played. Then the rain happened. Yeah, you just can’t top that Sanford Stadium moment.”
Fortunately for Dreher and Georgia fans, there has been no shortage of those victorious moments in the Kirby Smart era. Since the start of 2017, UGA’s lone home loss was the 2019 South Carolina game. From 2017-23, UGA is 41-1 within the friendly confines of Sanford Stadium, where Smart starred as a defensive back before embarking on a coaching career. And while UGA has made no shortage of SEC venues feel like home, there’s something unique about the game day experience that prevents it from feeling spoiled by winning.
Maybe it’s the famous hedges, which were just replaced with new ones this season (Dreher says the only people he knows who have gone home with an illegal Sanford Stadium souvenir were opposing fans). Or maybe it’s the fact that everywhere you look in a sea of black and red on a given fall Saturday, you’re likely to run into fans young and old who will bark like hungry dogs.
Whatever it is, that home-field advantage doesn’t take off weeks.
“Even (the home opener vs. Tennessee Tech), I was like, ‘oh, it’ll be a little laid back.’ No, it was not,” Dreher said. “By halftime, I had been barking like a madman for 4 hours.”
Dreher’s Sanford Stadium wish list doesn’t have much left to it. He would, however, like to witness Georgia hit the 70-point mark for the first time, and if a certain team from Tuscaloosa could finally leave Athens without a statement victory, that’d be an all-time moment. But grateful, he certainly is.
“I’m soaking it all in because these are the glory days,” Dreher said. “Through the last 21 years, I feel like I’ve gotten to see all I really wanted to see.”
Dreher will continue to enjoy his fall Saturdays in the way that countless Georgia fans do. Well, an elite, all-day tailgate setup with season tickets on the 50 isn’t necessarily the norm. Dreher appreciates every element of his favorite fall tradition.
After a Georgia game, he’ll sometimes close the night by meeting his buddies to watch the late college football games at local Athens favorite, Cutters. Dreher is a Georgia fan first, but he loves all things college football.
Just don’t ask him to leave Sanford Stadium a minute too soon.
“It’s my happy place,” Dreher said. “Someone was texting me during (a blowout win) if I was gonna leave the game early. I was like, ‘No. Absolutely not. I only get to sit in these seats 6-7 Saturdays a year. I’m going to cherish every second of this and soak it all in. I’m not leaving until security kicks me out.”
Connor O'Gara is the senior national columnist for Saturday Down South. He's a member of the Football Writers Association of America. After spending his entire life living in B1G country, he moved to the South in 2015.
