Diehard Bulldog fan placed early bet on second consecutive title game

Anne Sims learned her lesson last year and prepared early for the University of Georgia’s trip to the national championships, booking plane tickets and making hotel reservations three months in advance.

In 2022 when the Bulldogs headed to Indianapolis, Ind. for the College Football Playoff National Championship game, the UGA alumna was scrambling for a way to get there.

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“I looked at flights two weeks before and from Atlanta, it was $2,000. We ended up driving,” said Sims, who along with her daughter, Emily, have traveled together three times to see the Bulldogs play for the national title, including the 2018 loss to the University of Alabama. Sims also traveled to New Orleans for the 1980 Sugar Bowl victory that brought the Bulldogs a national title.

The drive last year ended up being a pleasant one.

“The ride through Kentucky was beautiful,” the North Augusta resident said. “And we stopped at a bourbon distillery.”

 But driving to Los Angeles wasn’t an option for the duo, so she placed an early wager making some refundable reservations, and her bet paid off.

 “It’s been fun,” said Sims, a diehard Bulldog fan who has held season tickets since the 1980s.

 She received both her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University and all three of her daughters attended her alma mater. While her daughters were growing up, she kept getting season tickets, but she gave a lot of them away because the girls were usually in the throes of rehearsals for Colton Ballet Co.’s Nutcracker.

Now, she’s glad she kept getting them year after year. She and Emily go to every home game together each season.

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Monday’s victory over TCU at Los Angeles’ SoFi Stadium was exciting for the Sims’ duo who were among the crowd of 72,568 people. And they weren’t the only Augustans to make the trip. Sims ran into friends while she was there.

The national championship was more than a game. It was an experience with a pre-concert by Kelsea Ballerini, who Sims had seen at the Guitar Pull a couple of years ago, and the National Anthem sung by Pentatonix.

And SoFi stadium was an experience in and of itself, she said, with its giant ‘Oculus’ video board suspended from the canopy, which didn’t shut out any of the South California downpour.

The game, of course, didn’t disappoint any Georgia fans with the Bulldogs winning their second consecutive national title defeating TCU 65-7.

 “It was a fabulous game,” she said. “Stetson Bennett was wonderful.”  

In 50 years of Georgia Bulldogs’ football, Sims said she’s seen plenty of drubbings like the Horned Frogs received at the hands of the Bulldogs. Unfortunately for Bulldogs’ fans, though, it was the dogs on the lower end of the score for many years that Sims has followed the team.

“I almost felt sorry for TCU,” she said. “It would have been much more pleasurable for it to have been Alabama or Clemson.”

Charmain Z. Brackett is the publisher of Augusta Good News. Reach her at charmain@augustagoodnews.com. Subscribe to the Augusta Good News newsletter here.