Bulldog fans turn G-Day into 93K Day

It was a Saturday in Athens, so fans wanted to see the Georgia football team.

They set up tailgates in and around the Georgia campus. Fans arrived early to see the players go through the Dawg Walk. Many posed for pictures around outside the stadium, decked out in Georgia red. Some parents brought their children to G-Day, so they could get their first taste of Georgia football.

The crowd was a sellout, as 93,000 fans showed up to watch the Bulldogs. With perfect weather, it felt like a picturesque fall Saturday.

It just happened to be in the middle of April.

“Opening remarks would be wow,” First year head coach Kirby Smart said to being his post G-Day press conference. “For the fanbase to come out like they did really touches my heart.”

Smart first unveiled his plan to the fans at a Georgia basketball game in January. He began pushing for fans to show up to what would be called 93K Day.

The question always seemed to be, would fans show up? Before today the highest attendance for a Georgia spring game was 46,815.

Despite the pessimism from some, Smart remained confident that 93,000 would fill Sanford Stadium. The day before G-Day, Smart went door-to-door to some of Georgia’s fraternity and sorority houses to get them to come to the game.

He even drew a large crowd from his hometown of Bainbridge—which is four and half hours from Athens.

“That’s my heart and soul. It’s a special place and to have a lot of fans come from there, it means a lot,” Smart said. “You look up into the stands and think ‘Did I really touch this many lives in the State? There’s no way I touched this many lives in the state.’”

Some fans first entered the Sanford Stadium gates at 1 p.m., when the G-Day festivities began with an alumni football game. Most fans waited for the team to walk from the buses through the stadium at Dawg Walk.

It was standing room only, as fans hoped to get a look at Jacob Eason and Smart as they entered Sanford for the first time publicly.

The Dawg Walk was a precursor for the actual G-Day game. The entire stadium — upper deck included — was filled. Fans were standing in the stairwells overlooking the field. The PA announcer twice asked fans to squeeze in to make room for more fans.

It wasn’t a normal gameday atmosphere, as the ticket scalpers and enemy colors were missing from Athens. The crowd rarely got loud, except for when Eason entered the game. On his first series, the Georgia faithful gave a standing ovation as the freshman quarterback came onto and left the field.

Beyond the cheers for Eason, the players still took notice of the fans that packed Sanford Stadium.

“I wasn’t expecting that at all. That was awesome to see and we have the best fans in the country,” guard Greg Pyke said.

Most of the fans didn’t stay, as the crowd dissipated after halftime. But it didn’t change the fact that Smart got his wish and fans got theirs.

They got to see what Georgia football with Kirby Smart looked like in full Sanford Stadium.

“I wasn’t surprised by it,” Lorenzo Carter said. “Kirby kind of gets what he wants.”

This story was originally published April 16, 2016 at 7:51 PM with the headline "Bulldog fans turn G-Day into 93K Day."