Remembering Coach Maffett

When Macon County won the Georgia Class 1A public school football championship back in December, beating McIntosh County 35-0, it was only the second state crown for the Montezuma school.

It also won the Class 1A state title in 1996 with a 16-8 victory over Putnam County.

Football at Macon County is relatively young with the sport getting started in 1962 under the guidance of head coach Jimmy Maffett. Maffett passed away Feb. 23, just 11 days after his 90th birthday.

While he coached the Bulldogs for 23 seasons, from that initial year up until 1984, he never was able to garner a state title, but he came close a couple of times.

His 1976 squad finished the regular season with a perfect 10-0 record and then won two games in the postseason before falling to Lincoln County in the State Class B semifinals. In nine of the 13 games that season, Macon County’s defense posted shutouts and for the year outscored the opposition 399-71.

His 1971 team also made it to the state semifinals. That season’s squad lost the season opener to Wilcox County 12-0 and then reeled off 10 consecutive wins before being eliminated by Southeast Bullouch 27-26 in the playoffs.

In his 23 seasons as the Bulldogs’ head coach he had just five losing campaigns, and two of those came in his first two years on the job. During his career, he won three Class 1B region championships, taking the title in 1970, 1971 and 1976. Coach Maffett had an overall record of 138-88-12.

He was a home-grown product and a member of the Greatest Generation. He was born in Macon in 1927 but grew up in Montezuma in Macon County. Outside of a stint in the U.S. Army during World War II and attending and graduating from Georgia, he never left that Middle Georgia farming community.

He got his first coaching and teaching job at old Oglethorpe, where he taught math and coached both boys and girls basketball and frack and field. Two of his top athletes at that school were girls basketball player Edwina Bryan, who went on to play for the Atlanta Tomboys, and W.C. Jones, who set numerous Class C track and field records that stood for years. Jones, who also starred in basketball for Oglethorpe, later was a middle school coach at Lanier in Macon.

When Oglethorpe and Montezuma merged in the early 1960s Maffett was named the football head coach at Macon County even though he had never played the sport. His mantra was God first, family second, school third and football fourth. He was old school in his philosophy and wanted to win, but as one of his former players told me he wanted to do it with honesty, integrity and character.

He would check on his players on Thursday nights prior to games to make sure they were at home, and if you were on the Bulldogs’ team soft drinks were considered off limits because they were full of sugar and not healthy.

He was a died-in-the-wool Bulldog, through and through (both Macon County and UGA) as he patterned his Macon County teams after much of what was going on at Georgia.

Jimmy Maffett was a true coaching legend in Macon County and the entire Middle Georgia area. Rest in peace.

This story was originally published February 27, 2017 at 4:35 PM with the headline "Remembering Coach Maffett."