1981 Sugar Bowl: An oral history of Georgia's win over Notre Dame

Thirty-seven years ago, Georgia captured its only undisputed national championship. For only the second time in program history, it will meet the team it defeated for its last title — Notre Dame. With the teams set for a top-25 matchup Saturday, the Bulldogs recount how they won the 1981 Sugar Bowl against the Fighting Irish.

At the end of the 1980 regular season, Georgia was the No. 1 team in the country. Having beaten Georgia Tech to finish 11-0, the Bulldogs earned a meeting with Notre Dame in the Sugar Bowl. Though the Fighting Irish were ranked No. 7, Notre Dame entered the game favored.

As the contest drew near, the Bulldogs didn’t know if they would play with their head coach, who had received an offer to lead Auburn.

VINCE DOOLEY, HEAD COACH: It just happened that at the time we just had this undefeated season where we were going to the Sugar Bowl. But (Auburn) is my alma mater. The governor of the state (Fob James) was my roommate. So there was a lot of emotional pull. I did go visit.

FRANK ROS, LINEBACKER AND TEAM CAPTAIN: Everybody thought he was going.

TIM MORRISON, OFFENSIVE LINEMAN: I was married, and I'm still married to the same girl. But I heard on the radio as we woke up in the morning that Coach Dooley was entertaining going to Auburn. I made a comment to her, “I hope he goes. If he's going to be a traitor like that and we've got him to the point that we were at an opportunity to win a championship and he was entertaining leaving.” In retrospect, he and I have had a number of conversations together, I wouldn't have blamed him for taking the job after the fact. Sometimes you think you're being taken care of extremely well as far as financially and you're really not.

BUCK BELUE, QUARTERBACK: Everybody knew (Dooley’s) background. That was his school and so everybody could sympathize with that part of it. I think it was the timing that shocked some people.

MORRISON: I don't think it did a whole lot to the team because we had assistant coaches that were great leaders. (Defensive coordinator Erk Russell) was the natural to step up and be the next coach at the University of Georgia at that time.

SCOTT WOERNER, DEFENSIVE BACK: Coach Russell was one of those guys who was like your dad. You didn’t want to let him down.

BELUE: Me as an offensive player, (Russell) just sort of transcended the football team. I can recall during halftime, trying to listen what his message would be on the other side of the locker room with the defense. That would have been an easy sell across the board there.

STEVE KELLY, BACKUP DEFENSIVE BACK: You name any other school besides Auburn and I don't think there would have been any chance he would have been in those conversations.

DOOLEY: The decision was made within three or four days. Even a rumor got out that I had accepted and was going, which was not the case at all. A lot of people thought that was the case. I never did in any way say I was going.

CHRIS WELTON, DEFENSIVE BACK: When he made the decision to stay he called the team together. It was kind of interesting. He actually asked us to take him back. We were in the meeting room in McWhorter Hall and the seniors typically sat in the front row. We were looking directly at him in the eye. He said, “Well, will you take me back?” Nobody said anything. It was silence. He had to ask at least two times. He said, “Well, will ya?” We all looked at each other and started nodding our heads. Of course, all of us said we would take him back.

DOOLEY: I shouldn’t have asked that question. They might have voted no, told me to go. I did ask that question. You could see the players were hurt. They didn’t understand how, in that situation, I could be interested. As I told them, see the fella sitting next to you? One of these days you’re going to be close to him. The governor of that state was my roommate and we were best of friends. This was my alma mater. I had to go take a look. I think they understood it a little bit better. It was tough in their minds to even understand how I could consider it.

BOB KELLY, BACKUP DEFENSIVE BACK: We made fun of that. We had a big dinner in McWhorter Hall before we left. Somebody came in there with a suitcase with an Auburn tie hanging out of it.

STEVE KELLY: You couldn't set up a more exciting event than what we were getting ready to play for.

HUGH NALL, OFFENSIVE LINEMAN: The seriousness of it was on everybody's mind. I'll never forget, Coach Dooley, to the best of my recollection, the first night we were there, said, “All right, boys, go have fun. Go hit Bourbon Street. Go do whatever.” I don't think we had a curfew that first night. He said, “Get it out of your system. We're here for something a lot more serious.” Everybody took it that way. We knew there was fun to be had after that.

MIKE FISHER, CORNERBACK: They got us up early the next morning, probably fully knowing that we were going to have a little bit of fun. They took us to the practice field and put cones on every corner of the end zones, and we were in sweats, and they say, “You guys start running. Start trotting.” I don’t know how long we ran but we ran a long time. There was a lot of sweat pouring out of us.

BOB KELLY: A lot of us had been to the Bluebonnet Bowl in 1978, and that was more of a party. That wasn't the modus operandi going into Notre Dame.

WELTON: The next thing I remember is we practiced out of Tulane. The first day of practice, we practiced first and then Notre Dame came out. We looked like a high school team with the exception of a couple of bigger guys. They were monsters. They at least seemed that way. They just seemed huge. We figured – as we were getting on the bus, they were getting off the bus, we were looking at them, they were looking at us – they were laughing at how small we were.

MORRISON: We thought we matched up pretty good until we saw them in person.

WELTON: The way I would put it is we noticed how large they were but we certainly weren’t intimidated by it. We knew what to expect.

BOB KELLY: I saw them on the field in warmups. It was like, “Oh my god.” I had never seen an offensive line that big in my life. They were all really tall and really big. The whole team was so much bigger than ours. The harder they fall, right?

ROS: I'd be lying if I said I didn't have a hard time falling asleep. I was excited about it, but more the thought process. If they do this, we're going to do that. I called the defense, so obviously I had to be on top of the game. My mind was rolling.

BOB KELLY: We had a big team meeting before we left the hotel. I remember Coach Dooley going through every player. And he goes, “Even though this guy is 6-foot-7, 300 (pounds), I'd rather have you!” He went through every player on the team and said, “I'd rather have you than that guy.” It got hilarious toward the end of it.

Before kickoff, Notre Dame took the field first. Georgia was waiting in the tunnel waiting to head out to the Superdome astroturf.

WELTON: Probably half of the high schools in America have the Notre Dame fight song. We’d all heard the music but when you’re standing in the tunnel, and you hear it – this is really the Notre Dame fight song. It sends chills down your spine. That really did.

WOERNER: When I really realized how big they were, it was right before the game. We’re out there for the coin toss. The two teams are standing there, 10 yards behind their captain and 20 yards from the other team. It literally looked like David and Goliath. I hadn’t seen guys 6-5 all the way across the front all year.

FISHER: I figured they would look at us and think, “We’re going to do what we want to with these guys.”

Notre Dame received the ball to open the game. Freshman quarterback Blair Kiel got the start and threw deep to Fisher’s side of the field on the first play from scrimmage, hoping to hit receiver Tony Hunter for a long gain. Hunter got a step on Fisher, but Kiel under threw the ball. The Irish, however, successfully moved the ball down the field.

Georgia held Notre Dame to an opening-drive field goal and took over on the ensuing drive. On the second offensive play, Herschel Walker took a hit to his left shoulder. Immediately, his arm went limp.

MORRISON: I knew he was hurt, but he didn't let on he was hurt.

BELUE: I recall seeing the looks on the faces in the offensive huddle. It was disbelief that something like this could happen, that we might lose him in the first couple of plays in the game.

FISHER: I remember him coming off and hanging his shoulder. I think the trainer had his hands up under his pads. I can’t remember if they took his pads off or not. I do remember that they said it was bad and that he needed to sit. I remember him shaking his head and saying, “I’m not sitting. Put my pads back on, I’m playing.”

BOB KELLY: He came to the sideline, and I was not three feet away. We had doctors on the sidelines and they were reaching under his shoulder pad to figure it out. I watched them put it back into place. I absolutely knew it. I thought he would be done at that point.

WOERNER: We all took a big sigh of relief when he went back in the game, even though we knew the shoulder had been dislocated.

BOB KELLY: We saw that he could still take the ball and run. He literally, when he got close to contact, would turn and hit that other shoulder. We figured he was going to stay in and find a way to gut it out. There was a momentary, “Oh my god. This is disastrous. This is really bad.” But he went right back in so it was short lived.

DOOLEY: It’s like what Herschel said later – “I didn’t come all the way down here not to play.” It’s the psyche of him. Some other players may not have played. But it was him. He said, “I didn’t come all the way down here to sit on the bench and not play.”

BOB KELLY: I think his leg would have had to been broken in half before he would have come out of the football game.

Following a penalty and a sack, the Bulldogs punted out of their own end zone, setting Notre Dame up on Georgia’s side of the 50-yard line. But as it had all year, the defense held strong and forced another field goal try.

MILES: It wasn’t an expectation, but we were going to find a way to do something to put our offense in a better position, or make a difference through special teams.

BOB KELLY: Over that season we were gaining a lot of respect for (Terry Hoage) and his athletic ability. You could tell he was going to be a superstar at some point. He could jump out of the gym. In fact, I recruited him to play on my intramural basketball team. He could do 360 dunks.

WELTON: In Sugar Bowl practice, he wasn’t expected to play on defense or on special teams. Our offense was kicking field goals and Terry was on the scout-team defense. He kept blocking our field goals.

DOOLEY: He was not scheduled to go to the game. One day at practice he blocked two more. The second one, I sent him in (and said), “Go in and get your uniform, you’re going to New Orleans with us. And you’re going to be on the kick blocking team.”

In practice that week with the first team, the play was for Hoage to step on a teammate’s back to leap up to block the field goal — a play that was legal in those days. Leading up to the game, however, Hoage wasn’t having the same success he had on the scout team. The game would tell a different story.

FISHER: I think Frank Ros was on the ground and you can’t imagine how many times he kicked whoever was on the ground in the rear end, falling on his face, falling at the line of scrimmage. It almost got comical.

WOERNER: We practiced that a bunch because we knew the (place-kicker) had a low trajectory. We had somebody jumping off of somebody’s back.

WELTON: It might have worked one out of 15 times in practice. But it just so happened that everybody blocked down the way they were supposed to and left that gap for Terry. It opened up the game and it just worked out.

DOOLEY: He might have stepped on a Notre Dame guy. He went up, it was incredible how he did it. That was Terry. He did it on his own more than any kind of tactical move.

FISHER: We figured if we could get somebody up in the air like that we might have a shot at it. We pulled it off like we had been doing that forever.

Following Hoage’s block, Georgia drove down the field on its ensuing possession, with place-kicker Rex Robinson tying the game with a 46-yard field goal.

WELTON: We tied it up 3-3 and we were kicking off. (Robinson) just happened to get under it and he was obviously trying to kick it into the end zone and hopefully get them to down it or get a touchback. He got a little under it.

BOB KELLY: Ninety percent of the time that ball would roll right through the end zone. It hit on about the 3-yard line. The ball bounced straight up. I'm watching it. I can still see it today as if it were in slow motion. I was astonished, one, that the Notre Dame guys weren't there to catch the ball. I glanced at them and I saw what had happened. Each of them thought the other man was going to take the kick.

NALL: The kickoff recovery was a big, huge mistake by Notre Dame to let that ball hit the ground. To be honest with you, there's no excusing that. I hate to say it that way, but being a coach for 24 years, I could see that happening the first game of the year but not the last game of the year.

STEVE KELLY: When I got about 15 yards about from the ball and still saw the ball on the ground, I think there was probably a little extra burst of energy thinking, “Man, maybe there's a chance to recover it or dive on it or bounce it up.”

BOB KELLY: (Cornerback) Greg Bell took one of their guys out, and my brother (Steve Kelly) crashed into the guy closest to the football. Literally just wiped him out. The ball kind of came spinning sideways. It looked like the proverbial watermelon. I was closing in on it, and I thought about trying to scoop it and score, and then I thought, “No, I just got to get it.' I dove and landed on it. Then, about 21 other guys were on top of me. There was a lot of scratching, biting, digging, pulling. I could feel the weight. I thought I was going to suffocate.

DOOLEY: We had a lot of fun saying that was the longest onside kick ever recorded in the history of the game. We still say that.

BOB KELLY: I came running off and I'm looking for Steve. He comes over and goes, “Who got it? Who got it?” I said, “I got it! You didn't know that?” He goes, “No, I dislocated my finger.” His finger went all the way back to his wrist.

STEVE KELLY: It's been swollen for the rest of my life. My (left middle) knuckle is twice as big as the same finger on my other hand. I wouldn't substitute that big knuckle for anything else in the world.

MORRISON: All of a sudden, next thing I know they're calling for the offense back on the field. We were over there catching our breath. We jogged out on the field and ran a couple of plays.

The first play was a quarterback sneak that got Georgia to the 1-yard line.

BELUE: Immediately, I knew what we were coming with. We were going to let Herschel go over the top. My first thought was this is crazy and then anticipating what the call would be, with Herschel getting airborne with that hurt shoulder again. Talk about being fearless.

MORRISON: Next thing I know, I've got Herschel Walker flying over me.

The two teams traded punts on their ensuing possessions. On Georgia’s, Belue threw a perfect pass to tight end Norris Brown that would have gone for a 57-yard touchdown. The ball fell through Brown’s hands.

Fisher said the lights at the Superdome made it difficult to track the ball, which could have led to this particular drop. In the second quarter, however, Georgia’s defense would come up with yet another big play.

WELTON: They ran a little dive to the fullback. They were on about the 20 going out. They ran a little dive to the fullback and Frank hit him just after the mesh point. I’m not sure the fullback actually got the football seated properly.

FISHER: When something came loose we seemed to always have somebody there capable of picking it up or recovering it.

WELTON: You know those dreams you have when you’re running as fast as you can but it is in slow motion because you’re so anxious to get some place? That’s how it felt. I dove on the football and just curled up because now these big linemen we’d seen get off the bus were piling on.

WOERNER: Frank stuck the guy. His helmet went right on the ball. Anybody’s ball would have popped out. The helmet, a couple of inches either way, it doesn’t happen.

WELTON: Back then, with no instant replay, it wasn’t who recovered the football, it was who came out of the pile with it. All those giants were sticking fingers in my eyes, grabbing my foot and trying to rip my foot off. I was just squeezing as hard as I could.

MILES: That ended up being what was our brand. We prided ourselves on being in position and executing properly. We might not have been the more superior athletes, or as talented as anyone else, but we always made sure we were around the ball, or somewhere near it.

Set up just outside the red zone, Walker took a handoff and ran the Bulldogs to the Notre Dame 10-yard line. Belue then took a QB keeper to the 4. On second-and-goal, Belue tossed the ball to Walker. Aided by a block from fullback Jimmy Womack, Walker sprinted into the front right corner of the end zone.

With Walker’s score and the ensuing extra point, Georgia took a 17-3 lead into halftime.

STEVE KELLY: We all recognized, even though we're up, maybe we stole seven points. We're really not out-playing them that much.

MORRISON: We needed to score more points.

BOB KELLY: We were walking down that tunnel to our locker and Scott Woerner just screamed out, “We are not losing this f---ing game.” It made everybody's hair on the back of their neck bristle.

STEVE KELLY: We had played in a bowl game, all of us, a couple years earlier down in Houston. It was called the Bluebonnet Bowl at that time. We were up maybe 22-0 on Stanford, and I want to say they came back and beat us 25-22. Our memories weren't that short at that time. We're going to have to play the best half of our life to win this football game.

All that being said, Notre Dame’s offense began to gather steam. Georgia’s offense slowed down. Belue had yet to complete a pass, and the Fighting Irish began bottling up Walker. Notre Dame was able to trim Georgia’s lead with a touchdown toward the end of the third quarter. The Bulldogs would go into the final quarter with a 17-10 lead.

KELLY: We knew our offense was struggling. It was having a tough time. The sense of the defense was we can't let them score anymore. That's it. Period.

BELUE: In the game, I’m thinking these guys are depending on me to come through and deliver. Just because I’ve had three bad quarters throwing it doesn’t mean I can’t be there in the end and help seal the deal. That was pretty much my mindset on it, to realize it wasn’t going to be a big day individually.

MORRISON: The defense has been on the field all game. We've been having these quick hits, so we've been in and out as an offensive team. The defense was absolutely worn out, but they were champions. They played their tails off.

WOERNER: We’d all be on the bench, and Coach Russell would come over there. It’s third down and then our team is punting again, and he’d say, “Fellas, we have to do it one more time.” The minute he’d say that it was like I’m fresh as a daisy, let’s go. We figured if we could do three and out, we’d be much better. We just wanted the football. Most of the time that was said in the huddle. Let’s go get the football.

MILES: We weren’t playing the sisters of the poor. We were playing a good football team, and a good football team was playing good football.

Notre Dame tries to trim Georgia’s lead with place-kicker Harry Oliver attempting a field goal. It misses wide to the left.

MILES: We’re fortunate for that you could say. But we’re giving all we can to hold them back as much as possible.

Georgia is forced to punt again. With around eight minutes left to play, Fisher comes up with the first of two big defensive plays that would ultimately decide the game.

FISHER: We were in a zone and I had my part of the field. I read what was going on in the backfield. I didn’t exactly know which side the ball was going to. But when I saw (Notre Dame receiver Tony Hunter) turn I just couldn’t have had any better position when he took that route.

WOERNER: All I can say is that was a great play. We were all rooting like crazy for the offense to go out there and burn some clock.

FISHER: After I made the interception, I go back to the sideline and this reporter (ABC’s Bill Flemming) comes over and asks me a question. I’ll paraphrase, but the question was, “With your interception and eight minutes left, do you think this game is over? Do you feel like you have sealed the victory?” Something like that. It’s probably why (the television crew) silenced it. I think I said something to the point of, “You must be absolutely out of your mind or crazy! There are eight minutes left in this ballgame. This thing is not over for a while.”

Georgia’s offense set Robinson up for a 48-yard field goal attempt. Robinson, however, missed to the right. Notre Dame would have another chance to tie, or win, the game. Georgia forced a punt but is unable to pick up a first down. At this point of the game, Belue is 0-of-11 passing.

DOOLEY: They sacked Buck about four times, they harassed him. But their concentration was going to be on Herschel. When you stack that many people up, you know he’s going to carry the ball.

FISHER: Obviously we’re thinking we got fairly good field position, maybe the offense will do something with it. No. They get the ball back.

WOERNER: Coach Russell had a saying in the locker room – “If we score, we may win. If they score, we may lose. If they never score, we will never lose.” That was our motto. We had 17 points, they had 10. All we had to do was keep them off the board and we’d win.

With just over three minutes remaining in the game, Notre Dame faced a fourth-and-1 on the Georgia 48-yard line. Kiel offers a slight play-fake but immediately has Georgia defensive lineman Jimmy Payne in his face.

WOERNER: It was a pressure interception. It was all because Jimmy Payne was in Blair Kiel’s face. It was a desperation throw. I was six or seven yards off the guy because he hadn’t turned around to see the ball. I’d seen where he tossed it.

FISHER: At that point, I think there was a sigh of relief that we could probably hand this off the Herschel a couple of times and this thing will be over. And we’re actually going to win this and we’re actually going to be national champs. And at that point everybody’s tired but you catch a second wind. All that crowd noise, all those fans are going berserk. It’s a pretty cool feeling.

MILES: Our defense was more predicated on making them react to what we were doing when they line up and come after us.

With just over two minutes left and the Bulldogs facing third-and-7, Belue rolled right and completed a pass to Anthony “Amp” Arnold for a first down. Belue finished the game 1-for-12, but his one completion sealed the game for the Bulldogs.

MORRISON: That was probably one of the most important passes we've ever thrown during the '80 season.

FISHER:  Once we completed that pass, I started feeling that as long as something completely crazy doesn’t happen, like you fumble a snap or something, that we had it.

MILES: You start standing up, you start looking at your teammates and taking in the moment, being thankful for being part of it and them being a part of it. You were there looking at your teammates, giving those looks of appreciation.

BELUE: You could see the Georgia fans in the Superdome were edging closer to the sideline. Reality was setting in that we were going to win the national title.

WOERNER: We’re all standing there and I’m looking around going, “Where are all these people coming from?” They just mobbed the sidelines. I guess they figured we got it locked. Then I look up and my wife to be, my girlfriend Marianne, at the time, she’s standing right beside me on the field. I couldn’t believe it.

BELUE: I was glad the offense was on the field when time ran out. I will always treasure those final seconds in the huddle, looking at those guys and embrace and say, “We did it. We did it.” That will be the greatest feeling I’ll ever have on the football field.

ROS: A sea of red engulfed the field. You couldn't move.

BOB KELLY: This crazy guy from Savannah that was a big Georgia fan lifted me up on his shoulders. I'm on his shoulders and he is walking around that field. And literally he would not let me down. I missed Coach Dooley's speech after the game. I missed all kinds of stuff in the locker room.

FISHER: People were asking if they could have something to take.

ROS: When we finally got close enough to the (locker room) doors, the security guards were grabbing us and yanking us in because you could hardly get through.

WOERNER: I barely remember any of it. Everybody on defense was exhausted. We were still hootin’ and hollering, and hugging everybody. We were just trying to recover. I was swilling whatever water bottle I could get a hold of, just to put some fluids back. I was tired. I was tired trying to get off the field. That was a struggle.

NALL: I remember Jimmy Carter was there (and) was supposed to come speak to us. They had to whisk him off because it got so wild. They couldn't control the crowd so they had to get the President out of there. I remember seeing the motorcade go by as I finally got my way into the tunnel to get out. Him being a Tech guy, I'm sure that had a little something to do with it.

BELUE: It was tough for me after the game because I had to meet with the media and I knew that was going to be a hitting point for them. I just didn’t want to come off across as a selfish guy only worried about his own individual performance. I was very conscious of that when I met with the media. It gave me a chance to brag on Herschel and the defense, and admit the passing game that didn’t work out. I was going to take the criticism for that and I was good with it.

BOB KELLY: The offense had a rough day, and I feel sorry for Buck. I think he was the greatest quarterback ever. He was the winningest guy I've ever been around and the most contagious winner I've ever been around. He didn't have a Jacob Eason-type arm, but he had a self confidence and a leadership quality that nobody I've ever known since had.

MILES: There was transportation prepared for you when you are at a road game to take you back to the hotel. I think more than half the team walked back. We enjoyed ourselves so long in the locker room and amongst each other. I do remember walking back to the hotel from the dome. (The walk was) about six or seven blocks.

BOB KELLY: It didn't sink in until you start thinking about, “We're actually going to get a ring that has ‘National Champions’ on it.”

ROS: The fact we were able to bring what still is the only undisputed national championship in football, that's definitely a honor and a humbling experience.

WELTON: I wish we’d win another one so you guys would leave us the hell alone.

This story was originally published September 7, 2017 at 2:03 AM with the headline "1981 Sugar Bowl: An oral history of Georgia's win over Notre Dame."