Georgia football: enclose Sanford Stadium?
Georgia football’s mission: it’s not just a game
On game day, when fans look west, they look out over the Georgia campus. True Bulldog believers yell with the sure and certain knowledge their cheers are heard beyond Milledge Avenue, only stopping after mingling with the Atlanta skyline. Between the third and fourth quarters, fans figuratively and literally light up the University. Each light twinkles and bobs west until it crests the earths curve and shines into space.
As beautiful and compelling as those sights, sounds, and thoughts are, the west end remains open for a grander purpose – to invite.
The tie that binds
The open west end invites all people to look east onto the Sanford Stadium turf, to gaze at the midfield G and to dream, to hope, and join the hopes and dreams of every other Bulldog alive, dead, or yet born.
The one and only experience every student at the University of Georgia shares is walking across Sanford Bridge and looking out into Sanford Stadium. It is the one single fiber that stretches from and to each and every member of the Georgia Nation.
The sight invites and excites the young and inspires the old. The open valley draws to the University the dreamers, the seekers, and the achievers.
Drive across Sanford Bridge at any particular time. You will see individuals, couples, family’s, small groups, and mobs looking and pointing, sharing memories, hopes and dreams while taking children’s portraits, group photos and graduation pictures.
With the west end open, Sanford Stadium is the Bulldog Capistrano.
The romance ends with the money
The original purpose and mission of Sanford Stadium is to draw friends and alumni back to Athens for Georgia football games, bonding the University Georgia with the four corners of the state. The reason Georgia plays football is to rally the friends, alumni of the University and the citizens of Georgia to support the University’s mission.
For University of Georgia President Jere Morehead to continue the University’s tradition of excellence and to lead its continued rise through the top-tier of American public universities, he requires big money and elite students.
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This is where you find the money, this is the magnet for an elite student population – inside Sanford Stadium. When anyone can stand on the bridge and stare into the heart of the University, they belong.