Monday, August 20, 2018

The Greatest Sports Headline!

"Happy Dicks was a   linebacker at Georgia in the mid 60's, which will make this article about the journalist from Georgia, the late, Lewis Grizzard, Bachelor of Arts, Journalism '68, that much funnier.

On the eve of the Georgia - South Carolina game 41 years  ago, I was hanging out with three Sigma Pi brothers (the  Hound, Tex, and Bake), drinking a few cold PBRs at the old  Callaway Gardens Apartment on the Atlanta Highway.

We were   discussing the upcoming game against the Gamecocks and  lamenting the fact that we were going in with several key  players out with injuries, including our starting defensive end, Billy  Payne (who ran the Atlanta Olympics and is now Chairman of the  Board at Augusta National) and his roommate, middle linebacker, "Happy"  Dicks.


About 10:00 that night, another fraternity brother, Lewis  Grizzard, came in after he got off work. Our buddy was  inactive in the fraternity at the time because he had gotten married over the   summer to his high school sweetheart, Nancy (the first of many wives--all with the same eventual last name -The Plaintiff).


In addition to   taking a full load at the University, he was working two  jobs to help pay for (as he called it) "this expensive marriage  habit." A talented young man, he was writing two  columns daily - one in the morning for the Athens Banner Herald and one in the afternoon for the Athens Daily News.

Lewis walked in, went straight to the refrigerator, got a  beer, plopped down in a chair, pushed his glasses back up  his nose and announced, "Gentlemen, with any luck at  all, tomorrow morning you'll witness journalistic  history. I have submitted my column and if it gets by my  editor - and there's a good chance of that happening,  since he looked drunk earlier this evening - you'll  enjoy the greatest headline in the history of sports  journalism."
  
He refused to tell us what it was, and to be honest with  you, we all forgot about it. As Lewis went home to his  lovely, young bride, the four of us went back over to the  Fraternity house to get a head start on the weekend.

The next morning, as usual, I went straight for the Sports  Section. As I pulled it out, I could do nothing but smile, because our buddy had pulled it off. To this day, Vince  Dooley calls it the most memorable sports column ever - all because  of the headline, which read:


"DOGS TO PLAY COCKS WITH DICKS OUT"

There's no doubt  about it, it was "the greatest headline in the history  of sports journalism."



He was certainly one of a kind!  Grizzard, I   mean.

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