Today’s interviewee is George Bobo, the head coach of Thomasville’s 1993 team that had been the last Bulldogs edition to reach the state finals until this year. Bobo was an assistant on Thomasville’s most recent champion in 1988. Bobo, 71, moved back to Thomasville this year after spending the past 18 years in Rabun County. He’s in the same Sunday School class as Mike Hodges, the head coach of Thomasville’s 1988 team.
George Bobo, coach of Thomasville’s 1993 state finalist
1. Are you watching many high school games these days, and how is it different than when you coached? “I’ve been to three Thomasville games this year. I saw half the Worth County game. I watched them play Rabun County because I’ve known Gunner Stockton and his family for a long time. Then I watched them Friday night. The rest of the time I’ve been in Auburn watching my grandson. [Drew Bobo is a three-star offensive line prospect and the son of Mike Bobo, who was been Auburn’s offensive coordinator this season.] It’s a lot different now. When I started at Commerce [under Ray Lamb in the 1970s], you could cast a net over all 22 players because most were in the I-formation or a three-back set. There wasn’t a whole lot of passing going on. Scores were 14-7. A big win would be 35-7. That would be like ‘wow’! Then the wishbone went away when they stopped letting you block below the waist. The next thing that came along was you were allowed to use your hands to pass block. As a college coach once told me, it’s a lot easier to throw it out to an athlete than to make sure that all 10 are blocking for that one person. Bodies are a whole lot bigger now, too. The other thing is football never used to be year-round. When I came along, you played football, you played basketball or you wrestled, and then you ran track of played golf. You met four times [for football] in June. Coaches used to have second jobs in the summer. Now they’re going like colleges, working four days a week all summer.”
2. What do you think of this year’s Thomasville team? “They’re very good defensively. I had seen them three times in the last three years, and this is the best defensive team they’ve had. They have good linebacker play and really good team speed. The secondary guys could cover all the wideouts against Rabun County. They’d play man to man on the outside and Rabun’s receivers couldn’t get open. Gunner was waiting, and then he was scrambling or they would tackle him. They did a good job of pressuring. If you can take a quarterback and get him off his launch point, then he becomes a different animal. It’s hard to throw when you’re running or laying on your back.”
3. What are your best memories of Thomasville’s 1988 team, the Bulldogs’ last state champion? “The ‘88 group had some very good skill players. You had Charles Bostwick, the quarterback, who went to Georgia Southern. We had Shawn Austin, who was an all-conference defensive back at Georgia Southern. And he played halfback. The fullback, James Williams, was a B-back at Georgia Southern. We had Mike Jones, who went to Georgia, at free safety and halfback. And we had a wide receiver named Jerome Williams who ended up a two-time All-American at Delta State. That was a talented group. The year before, we had Shawn Jones [the quarterback who led Georgia Tech to the 1990 UPI national title] with those guys as juniors, but Central [of Thomasville, now known as Thomas County Central] had Charlie Ward [the future Florida State Heisman Trophy winner and New York Knicks point guard]. Charlie Ward was probably as good a football player as I’ve ever seen.” [In 1987, Thomasville beat Ward’s Central team 15-6 in the regular season and was 11-0 and ranked No. 1 when the two met again for the region title. Central won the rematch 35-21. In 1988, with Ward off to FSU, Thomasville went 15-0.]
4. Thomasville’s last appearance in a state championship was 1993, when the Bulldogs lost to Thomas County Central 14-12 in what remains one of the most memorable games in state finals history because it featured cross-town rivals in a game that came down to a goal-line stand. What’s it like to be back in Thomasville when the Bulldogs are finally getting back to the finals, and what was that 1993 game like? “I sat there the other night with a guy from Central who’s a good friend of mine [former Thomas Central and longtime assistant Bill Shaver] and with Alan Rodemaker [Colquitt County’s defensive coordinator and former Valdosta coach]. Alan was the secondary coach on the 1993 team. He said, ‘Coach, it was 28 years ago we were playing Winder-Barrow here in the semifinals.’ I said, ‘Yes, we were. It’s been that long.’ Thomasville still loves football. It’s just great for this community. They’re all excited. Now they’ve got to ride all the way up to Atlanta to play somebody that’s close to them [Fitzgerald]. I know they’d rather play here where you get to celebrate with your friends and aunts and uncles and classmates. When playing those games up there, they hurry you in and hurry you out. But that’s the nature of the beast now. Football is very important to this community, and they will be represented at the state game for sure.
“In 1993, that game was played at Central. You get in the car and ride three miles and you’re there. I’ve never seen so many people at a football game. You couldn’t walk on the sidelines. We got to the goal line, and we didn’t score [stopped four times from the 1-yard line]. I won’t get into that controversy. They won the football game. They’d beaten us 28-7 in the first game, and coach [Ed] Pilcher just called the dogs off us. We improved a whole lot like a good football team does and ended up playing for a state championship. We didn’t have the skill people that we had in ‘88, but we had a bunch of good high school players that played together and got better from when we started and ended up playing for a state championship.”
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