As Georgia was opening its fall camp of 1985, head coach Vince Dooley suddenly uttered the name of a former player most of the surrounding Bulldog followers had long forgotten.
Dooley had been questioned by the media regarding who would start under center in the season opener: redshirt freshman Wayne Johnson or sophomore James Jackson. The game would be against Alabama on Labor Day night, and either way signify as the first time in school history a black quarterback would be starting for Georgia.
"It's [an antiquated subject] to me," Dooley declared to reporters. "People forget about Tony Flanagan."
Yet, although it had been nearly a decade since he'd left UGA, how could anyone truly forget Anthony (Tony) Flanagan—according to some Bulldog teammates, “The Flim-Flan Man," or simply "Flan"?
Between leading Southwest (Atlanta) High School to state basketball championships as a junior and senior, Flanagan guided the Wolves to a state football title in 1973. The lanky, 6-foot-3 and roughly 200-pound quarterback could run like the wind, and had a rifle for an arm—make that arms. Flanagan was ambidextrous, able to throw a football 70 yards on the fly with his throwing arm; nearly 60 yards with the other.
During Southwest's perfect 13-0 campaign of ‘73, Flanagan passed for 2,241 yards and 31 touchdowns, rushed for another 12 scores and—get this—kicked 60 extra-points and two field goals. He was one of the most highly recruited and publicized high school athletes in the state and, still today, is considered perhaps the best amateur athlete ever to come out of the Atlanta area. Flanagan’s high school accolades by themselves would make quite a story.
Flanagan was recruited by what was reported as over 300 colleges, offering scholarships in four different sports: football, basketball, tennis, and track. In the end, he decided to sign a football grant-in-aid at Georgia—for one, since the school was close to home. But by also signing a football scholarship—and not a grant-in-aid specifically with any of the other three sports—Flanagan had the option of being a multi-sport college athlete.
Still, as a senior in high school, Flanagan announced he'd only play basketball at UGA—at first—leaving the door open for the possibility of participating in a second sport down the road.
After he averaged nearly 12 points per game as a member of Georgia's basketball team for the 1974-75 and 1975-76 campaigns, while leading the Bulldogs in assists both seasons, Flanagan finally decided to explore other avenues, and went out for the football team in the spring of 1976.
That season, Georgia was described as being “undoubtedly the deepest” it had ever been at the quarterback position. Even before Flanagan decided to give football a try, six signal callers were jockeying for position that spring, including the top two who were both proven seniors: Ray Goff, the starter the season before, and Matt Robinson, the starter from the season before that, in 1974.
Nevertheless, after having skipped organized football for two-and-a-half years, Flanagan promptly began showing flashes that spring of the brilliance that had made him a household name around Atlanta a few years before. He soon was the team's No. 3 quarterback, yet seemingly stuck behind the two immovable seniors, Goff and Robinson.
"When Tony got comfortable on the field, he was a really good player," said Steve Davis, a teammate of Flanagan's at Georgia. Davis was Georgia's starting split end and second-leading receiver in 1976. "Flan had a really strong arm."
For the G-Day spring game, Goff was named the starting quarterback of the Black team, and Flanagan the starter for the Red squad, as Robinson was sidelined with an injury. Late in the second quarter, with the Red leading the Black, 9-3, Flanagan proceeded to direct his team on a long drive which would be the difference in the contest. Facing second and goal from the Black's 11-yard line, Flanagan rolled to his right and appeared to be trapped at the sideline by several defenders. Suddenly, he jumped in the air and out of bounds but, while still in the air, whipped a perfect touchdown strike to Davis.
"It was unbelievable," Davis said. "Flan threw me the ball when he was out of bounds, but his feet were inbounds when he left the ground. He probably was about five to six feet out of bounds when he finally landed."
Trailing 16-3 at halftime, newspaper writer Jesse Outlar, the honorary head coach of the Black, claimed that if his quarterback, Goff, "didn't get a couple of quick touchdowns, his coach was going to get fired." Whereupon, Goff apparently retorted, "To heck with the coach—did you see what that other quarterback (Flanagan) is doing? I'm the only one who may get fired."
Flanagan's running and passing prowess established him as the star of G-Day, which ended in a 19-13 victory for his Red team.
By the start of the season, even as he was slotted behind Goff and Robinson, Flanagan was drawing nationwide attention, including that of Georgia's season-opening opponent, the 15th-ranked California Golden Bears. Leading up to the game, Cal's head coach, Mike White, believed there was such a good chance of Flanagan seeing action against his team, he actually spent time game-planning for the third-string quarterback. Flanagan wouldn't appear against Cal. However, a week later at Clemson, with Georgia leading 34-0, he was inserted late in the game.
"This (Flanagan’s appearance at Clemson) was a rather historical moment in UGA football history,” said Matt Robinson, Georgia’s No. 2 quarterback for that game. “Anthony made the first-ever appearance for the Bulldogs by an African-American quarterback in a varsity game. Late in the game, Anthony led the offense on a long drive which resulted in a touchdown to wrap up the scoring."
In addition, Flanagan had become the first Bulldog athlete to see varsity action in both football and basketball since Zippy Morocco during the late 1940s.
For the 1976 regular season, Flanagan appeared in four games, rushing for 73 yards on just eight carries and completing his only pass attempt for a 16-yard gain. Against Vanderbilt, he also added another milestone to his legacy when he rushed for a score, becoming Georgia’s first black quarterback to score or be responsible for a touchdown.
At season's end, in the Sugar Bowl, trailing Pittsburgh 27-3 and with the game already decided, Dooley inserted Flanagan under center for Georgia's final offensive series, essentially indicating who was the Bulldogs' likely starting quarterback for 1977. But, any vision the head coach had of the dual-threat signal caller starting for him nine months later would not be realized.
Entrenched in a three-way quarterback battle as late as a mere week prior to the start of the '77 campaign, Flanagan reportedly first stopped practicing, then abruptly left campus. After having difficulty with his studies, Flanagan had been declared academically ineligible because of an alleged grade forgery—a charge he vehemently denied.
In January, he enrolled at Gardner-Webb, seeking to play both football and basketball after sitting out a year. But Flanagan would never participate in either sport at the small college in North Carolina, and his collegiate athletic career was over.
Flanagan resurfaced four years later, at the age of 25, when he decided to try out for the Atlanta Pride semi-pro team of the non-paying American Football Association. Roughly 1,100 individuals, including a handful of former NFL players, tried out for the Pride's meager 37 roster spots, with Flanagan emerging as the team's starting quarterback.
Passing and running with the mastery he'd demonstrated years before, Flanagan guided the Pride to the league's playoffs. In late August of 1982, just over a week after being responsible for four of his team's five touchdowns in Atlanta's playoff game, Flanagan was signed by the Boston Breakers of the upstart United State Football League (USFL). However, during training camp prior to the start of the new league's initial season, Flanagan became ill and was cut from the team. He would soon be diagnosed with diabetes.
There’s the notion that Flanagan surely had to be disappointed that his athletic career after high school didn't quite pan out, and saddened because of the disease he endured. Still, people close to him will say he never seemed disheartened or dissatisfied with his circumstances.
In fact, Flanagan appeared to find as much pleasure in teaching sports to kids as he'd discovered while playing sports as a youth.
For 14 years, Flanagan worked with the Atlanta Parks and Recreation Department, coaching youth sports—namely (and fittingly), football and basketball—at the John F. Kennedy Recreation Center. As a consequence of a tough lesson Flanagan had learned while at UGA, children could not play for "Coach Flan," as he was affectionately called, unless they had passing grades in school.
In 2001, after a bout with pneumonia and a steady decline in health for more than two years, Flanagan suffered a burst blood vessel in his brain from complications from his diabetes, leading to an untimely death at the age of just 44 years old.
According to Flanagan’s widow, Rosalyn, just after her husband’s death, “[Flan] told me recently that whatever God had put him on this Earth to do, he had done it.”
Flanagan did indeed do it—and, for that, he should never be forgotten. Even more than becoming the first black player to line up under center for Georgia, the athletic legend from Atlanta simply known as “Flan" was an imperfect individual who learned from his mistakes to move forward and positively impact the lives of others.
