Thoughts and Prayers for Bulldog Legend

Bill Hartman Jr, legendary former player and coach at Georgia is having some serious health problems right now. Chip Towers of the AJC has a nice personal note about it on his blog.

I wrote about my favorite Bill Hartman story a few months back. Here's the blurb from the blog article:

-- My favorite story so far from the book is about Bill Hartman, the pan-ultimate bulldog. Hartman was an All-American fullback for Georgia in 1937. He was also our kicker. After two years of pro ball, he returned to Georgia in 1939 under head coach Wally Butts as backfield coach and served in that capacity until 1956. Dooley brought Hartman back in 1970 as the volunteer kicking coach.

That part of the story most everyone knows. What I didn't know is that the NCAA did away with the volunteer coach in the early 1990s. So Hartman went back to grad school at UGA so that he could serve as a Graduate Assistant coach for 3 more years. He was near 80 at the time. To keep the kickers focused, he would run them through their kicking drills each practice. However, that never took the entire practice. So Hartman would teach the kickers the "Notre Dame Box" offense that he ran at Georgia under Harry Mehre, a former ND assistant under Rockne. They would run plays from this offense just to keep them focused and engaged.

Photo: Hartman in Action

The Notre Dame box was the contemporary to the Single Wing. The sight of kickers, punters, snappers and holders all running a 40-50 year old outdated offense while an 80 year old man coaches them up is comedy to me. It must have worked as our best kickers all played for Hartman. Butler, Robinson, Kasey, etc. Every elite kicker except Billy Bennett was trained by the legend who taught kickers based on the golf principals of consistent swings.

Best wishes to a Damn Good Dawg.

(hat tip to dawgbone.net)

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