Catching Up With… PAT HODGSON

By Patrick Garbin—Twitter @PatrickGarbin

From Hodgson's Pharmacy to UGA’s Hodgson School of Music, the name Hodgson is forever linked with the city of Athens. Bearing the surname, Pat Hodgson—the grandson of Morton Hodgson, a mascot of the Georgia baseball team during the 1890s and the school’s first four-sport letter winner—was a star athlete at Atlanta’s Westminster, where he was recognized as a First Team All-State end and the Greater Atlanta Lineman of the Year as a senior in 1961.

At Georgia, Hodgson led the SEC in receiving as a sophomore in 1963 with 24 receptions during a season he wasn’t even considered a starter. As a senior two years later, he had 26 catches, earning All-SEC honors for a second time. After a brief period in the NFL, Hodgson began a coaching career in college and the NFL lasting nearly 30 years, followed by—of all things—working in the I.T. (information technology) industry before returning to the Athens area in 2009, where has enjoyed retirement ever since.

I recently caught up with Pat Hodgson from his home at The Georgia Club:

PG: Pat, please briefly detail your family lineage, which includes four Hodgson's to earn football letters at Georgia.

PH: My grandfather (Morton) lettered in football in 1906 and was Georgia’s first four-sport letter winner (football, basketball, baseball, and track). There’s only been one other since—John Carson (early 1950s). Actually, my grandfather should have lettered in five sports but Georgia did not give out letters for tennis at the time. My dad (Hutch) lettered in football in 1933. And, my son, Pat Jr., played football at Clarke Central and walked on for a year at Georgia, but he did not play. One of his granddaughters goes to school at UGA now, so there’s been a string of five generations of Hodgson's to attend Georgia.

PG: With such a long lineage, even when you were coming out of high school, was there any thought to attend school elsewhere than UGA?

PH: Oh, yeah. You have to remember that when I graduated high school, Georgia was going through tough times under [Johnny] Griffith (the Bulldogs’ head coach) between the [Wally] Butts and [Vince] Dooley tenures. Georgia was really struggling. Another part of it was I really didn’t know if I could play major-college football. My senior year, I had captained three different teams—football, basketball, and baseball—but we only had about three athletes at Westminster, so it wasn’t really hard to be the captain. Although schools like Georgia Tech and North Carolina were recruiting me fairly hard, I was thinking along the lines of W&L (Washington & Lee), Kenyon College (Ohio), where my brother (Hutch) had played football, Presbyterian, and Furman. But, I then went on a recruiting trip [to UGA] and, all at once, I decided that if I was going to play football, why not see if I can play against the best. And, if I was going to go to a school, my thinking was I would maybe meet people that I would later be in business with since I wanted to remain in the state. Since I wasn’t interested in engineering, I chose Georgia—and really for only those reasons and not because my dad and granddad had gone there.

PG: A underappreciated game in UGA football history is when the Bulldogs defeated the Miami Hurricanes during the 1963 regular season in the Orange Bowl. What do you remember about your performance (nine catches, including two touchdowns, for 192 yards) in that 31-14 win?

PH: I had yet to start on the varsity team, and wasn’t supposed to for that game. Back then, you played both ways and Mickey Babb, a senior (and alternate captain), combined to play real well on offense and defense. I was a reserve receiver on offense and what would now be considered an outside linebacker on defense behind Mickey. Well, for whatever reason, I was chosen to start over him in Miami (Hodgson had reportedly graded out better than Babb the week before against Clemson—the reason for him getting the starting nod). [Larry] Rakestraw (Georgia’s quarterback) had an unbelievable night, throwing for 400-something (407) yards. As for me, I was just fortunate to be in the right place for a lot of them.

PG: From 1963 under Coach Griffith to 1964 under Coach Dooley, Georgia went from completing an average of 11 passes per game to three. Instead of passing far less, what was the biggest difference between the two head coaches’ styles?

PH: Yeah, we beat Florida in 1964, 14-7, and threw only two passes, and didn’t complete either of them. As far as what Coach Dooley instilled was preparation—no doubt about it. And, let me say this about Griffith, having coached for almost 30 years, I kind of understood what he went through. After Butts left, a lot of his staff remained, but Georgia named the head freshman coach the head coach of the varsity. So, I don’t know how many of Butts’ old assistants were loyal to him. The way we were coached then, there wasn’t really any cohesiveness. But, when Coach Dooley came in, he brought in a lot of great assistants: Erk Russell, Bill Dooley, Hootie Ingram, to name just a few. It was hard-nosed football, but not like before when we might be practiced to death. Instead, when we made a mistake under Dooley, they corrected us in practice and switched people around if they had to.

PG: I’d be remiss if I didn’t ask about the famous “flea-flicker” touchdown play that you were a part of which pulled Georgia within a point of Alabama in 1965 with less than three minutes remaining. But, I really want your feedback regarding the two-point play which essentially won the game, 18-17.

PH: And, actually, it was called a “flea-flicker” but it was more of a “hook-and-lateral” play, where I caught a short pass from Kirby Moore and then pitched it to a trailing Bob Taylor, who completed the 73-yard score. Honestly, there was a question if my knee touched or not when I had the ball, and if there was instant replay back then, maybe it gets called back. But, for the two-point play, it goes back to what I just mentioned—preparation. We were prepared by actually having a two-point play. What gets overlooked is we could’ve kicked the extra point and tied mighty Alabama, which would have been big. But a young Coach Dooley, only in his second year as head coach decides to go for two—all or nothing. I was really the third option on the two-pointer, but after he called the play, Kirby said to me, “Pat, get open in the back of the end zone.” So, when I ran to the back of the end zone and hooked back to the outside, Kirby was already outside; he was on a sprint out that way. Everybody was running to reach the other two guys (options), and this huge hole opened up inside, so I slid back to the right, and Kirby threw it to me in the back of the end zone. All I could think about was “Just don’t drop the damn thing.” Also overlooked is Alabama had a great placekicker (David Ray), and drove down the field with a chance to win it with a field-goal attempt, but missed. What a great win!

PG: What other moment do you recall fondly from your Bulldog playing career?

PH: An overlooked game a couple of weeks after Alabama, we went up to Ann Arbor and beat Michigan. They were defending Rose Bowl champions and we were a significant underdog. Back in Athens after the [15-7] victory, roads around the Varsity and the Chapel Bell actually got shut down. Practically the whole town was shut down. We flew back on Southern Airways, refueling in Nashville before flying into Athens. From the airplane, we saw what appeared to be a lit expressway heading to the airport, and we couldn’t figure out what it was. Turned out, it was six to seven thousand people backed up from the airport waiting to greet the plane. A side story, a different Southern Airways plane landed right before ours in front of the Georgia contingent. Expecting the Georgia team to get off the plane, the crowd started chanting, “Damn good team! Damn good team!” Instead, an elderly woman got off that plane first, whereby the crowd started chanting, “Wrong damn plane! Wrong damn plane!”

PG: After UGA, you were briefly in the NFL with the Washington Redskins and Minnesota Vikings before having a career-ending ankle injury. From there, how did you get into coaching?

PH: Coach Dooley, who had asked me before if I might be interested in coaching, called me up and said that they were going to add a position (offensive coordinator for the Georgia freshman team), and would I be interested. I said, “Well, yeah!” I missed football, so I went from playing to coaching in a period of three or four months. I eventually got hired at Florida State in ’71, and although I wound up spending only a season there, I became close with Bill Parcells, who was the linebackers coach. I then went back to Georgia and was there from the ’72 through the ’77 seasons, where I coached receivers and quarterbacks. At that time, I had been at Georgia a while and could have stayed, but I was going through some personal things but, more so, needed to find out if I could truly coach or not. I got offered a job at Texas Tech where Rex Dockery was the head coach and Parcells was there too.

PG: But, you left Texas Tech only after a few months to be the receivers coach for the San Diego Chargers. After one season in San Diego, how did you get on with the New York Giants—Bill Parcells?

PH: Actually, “Perk” (Ray Perkins), who had been the offensive coordinator when I was in San Diego, approached me and said he was going to New York to be the Giants’ head coach, and he wanted me to come with him to be the receivers coach. Bill Parcells asked me to help him get to New York with Perk, so I introduced them. He became the DC and eventually the head coach of the Giants when Perk left to replace Bear Bryant as head coach at Alabama. With both Perk and Parcells as the head coach, I wound up being in New York for nine seasons.

PG: You later were an assistant with the Pittsburgh Steelers and New York Jets, as well, before working for nine years in I.T. How do you go from coaching professional football to the I.T. industry?

PH: I had a friend who told me that if I ever got out of coaching, he needed some “gray hairs” for a little company he started which dealt with systems integration for voice recognition—the technology was just getting started at the time. We eventually got bought out by Nuance. There, although I was not I.T.-oriented, I worked with techies. It was a great experience; I really enjoyed it. I worked with some people who were brilliant as hell. It was fun—very interesting. I eventually became the company’s director up in New Jersey. It proved to me that I could do something other than coach.

PG: So, you eventually retired and settled back in the Athens area, right? And, tell me about your family.

PH: My oldest son was here [in Athens], and we wanted to get back to the Athens area, so we did in 2009—and me and my wife, Mary Ann, have been enjoying it ever since. Pat Jr., still lives in Athens, and is married with two daughters—one goes to UGA, like her father did, and the other goes to Florida State. I have another son, Chris, who is single and lives in Poolesville, Maryland. He also went to Georgia.

PG: Finally, what are you up to nowadays?

PH: I just try to stay busy. I’m active in The Georgia Club Foundation, where we raise money to give to local charities. I volunteered at Athens Academy as an assistant football coach. Now, I work with kids, usually, sons of friends, tutoring them to be better football players. Whether playing or coaching, I was a part of many teams, so there often is a reunion to attend. I stay active with the Georgia lettermen. Of course, I keep my nose out of the program from a coaching standpoint. I’m just one of the fans in the stands and enjoy going to one or two games per season, usually with my son. I just love being back in Athens and around the program.