ATHENS — How much sentiment could be involved with throwing on a pair of overalls and painting one’s head for a football game? If you are familiar with the Woods family of Athens and their “Big Dawg” tradition, you know that answer to be “a lot.”
Their family tradition, which spans 40 years and three generations, continues this year. Mike Woods, known in the family as “Little Mike,” has been passed the paint brush. You’ll see him and his painted pate Saturday in Section 135 at Sanford Stadium or as he makes his rounds around the Tate Center’s tailgates as the Bulldogs renew the “Deep South’s Oldest Rivalry” against Auburn for the 129th time.
The Auburn rivalry is special to the Woods for a myriad of reasons, but this year’s game is particularly nostalgic in the Big Dawg legacy. The Tigers’ visit to Athens in 2022 represents the last time that the Woods brothers, Little Mike and Trent, dressed up together in their red and black overalls and, with painted pates, patrolled their hallowed UGA grounds posing for pictures, flashing the No. 1 sign and barking out Georgia cheers for adoring fans.
Trent Woods died suddenly in February. He was only 45 years old.
This is why Little Mike has to fight back tears any time he’s asked about his brother or the family’s Big Dawg tradition.
The overalls the brothers wore that day in 2022 bear special significance. One set of red and one set of black, they were passed down from the late Mike Woods Sr., who made the Big Dawg tradition famous. Senior died in 2017, passing the tradition to Trent, his youngest son.
Moving forward, Trent always wore the red overalls. Nobody’s sure why, but that’s just the way it worked out. And whenever the situation would allow it, Little Mike would join him. Wearing the black overalls, Little Mike would have his wife, Christine, paint the “Power G” on his head and accompany his brother on their rounds wherever Georgia happened to be playing on a particular Saturday.
For homecoming Saturday, Little Mike will don the red overalls in his brother’s honor. There also will be some extra paint back of his head to implore the Bulldogs to “Win for Trent.”
“I have never worn my brother’s red overalls,” Mike Woods said, choking back tears. “The last Auburn game he and I were together, I had the black ones on and he had the red ones, and we went up in the stands and had a picture made with my son in the Georgia paint line. That’s a very special memory.”
Credit: Photo courtesy of Mike Woods
Credit: Photo courtesy of Mike Woods
Surely it will come as no surprise that Hampton Woods, Little Mike’s son, joined UGA’s infamous paint line while he was in school. Twenty-four years old and graduated now, Hampton has agreed to take over when his father hangs up the overalls. The Big Dawg Tradition is safe for at least another generation.
There’s only one problem. His son is not “follicle-challenged” like the rest of the Woods men.
“He’s got a big ol’ head of hair,” Mike said. “He takes after his mama. So that’s gonna be a problem.”
For those unfamiliar with this unusual family tradition, how it got started is stranger than fiction. The story begins quite literally on the concrete floor of Stegeman Coliseum with an interaction between Little Mike’s grandfather and the most famous “baldie” in Georgia football history.
Lonnie Lee Woods was a World War II veteran who became a maintenance worker at UGA’s Georgia Coliseum (since renamed) in the 1970s. One day, legendary Georgia defensive coordinator Erk Russell was walking through the concourse level of the coliseum when he found Lonnie lying still on the floor. Russell feared there may be some medical emergency, but the reason Lonnie was lying flat was because a shrapnel injury from the war often left him with severe leg pain. When it did, all he could do was lie still until it passed.
Hearing about this, Russell took down some notes with the pencil and pad he always kept with him and walked away without much more discussion. Fearing he was about to be fired, Lonnie Woods was relieved to find out the next day that Russell had a new job for him.
“They took my grandad to Erk Russell’s office and he said, ‘you’re only job from this day forward is driving the defensive team’s bus for our team,’” Mike Woods said. “So, my grandad starting driving Erk’s bus to games.”
Also bald, Russell suggested one day that Lonnie ought to make good use of the space. So he suggested that Lonnie paint his head for those drives.
“Not being able to grow any hair up there, my grandfather thought, ‘why not?’ So they found an art student on campus, she painted his head and that’s where it all started,” Mike Woods said.
That just happened to be Georgia’s 1980 season. The Bulldogs, of course, won the national championship that season. And, so, a tradition was born.
Credit: brant-sanderlin
Credit: brant-sanderlin
It was the 1990s before Mike Sr. took the tradition public. As for how that tradition was passed down to younger brother Trent rather than older brother Mike Jr., there’s a story behind that, too.
It was decided at least a year before Mike Sr. died from a heart ailment in 2017 that Trent would be the next in the line of Big Dawgs. Since graduating from UGA, Little Mike always has lived away from Athens. A salesman for industrial equipment, he has lived in Knoxville, Tennessee, Canton, Kennesaw and now Marietta to be able to service his territory in western Tennessee and Alabama.
“After praying about it and talking to my wife, I called my dad and told him, ‘the reality is Trent lives in Athens, he works for the university, he’s not going anywhere,” Little Mike recalled. “I told him, ‘I don’t know that I’ll ever get to move back to Athens. So, it really needs to be Trent.’ I told him that I would support Trent however I could, that I’d paint the Power G on my head and be with him whenever I could.”
There even have been a couple of times, Mike confessed, that Trent couldn’t go to a game. So, he just had the bulldog painted on his head and went to the game in his brother’s stead.
“People would call me Trent and I’d just let it go,” Mike said with a laugh. “Nobody needed to know.”
Now, the legacy is carried on from a home base in Marietta. Little Mike and Hampton traveled to Tuscaloosa together this past weekend for Georgia’s game against Alabama, and they’ll be together in Athens on Saturday. Have paint, will travel.
Occasionally, that tradition is carried on in sadness. There will be some tears shed this homecoming weekend as Trent’s sudden death remains a fresh wound for everybody in the family.
But mainly it’s a 16 weeks-a-year celebration of the Bulldogs’ winning tradition in football and a family that has created a legacy coming along for the ride.
“It’s not remotely a ‘have-to,’ not remotely a burden,” Little Mike said this week. “I love it. It’s fun. We have a blast. It’s a good thing, and we’re going to do it, and we’re going to do it right and show respect for my dad, my granddad and my brother.”
Credit: Photo courtesy of Mike Woods
Credit: Photo courtesy of Mike Woods
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