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The Georgia Bulldogs are the intercollegiate athletic teams that represent the University of Georgia. The Bulldogs compete in NCAA Division I and are members of the Southeastern Conference (SEC). The official mascot is an English Bulldog named Uga, (derived from an abbreviation of the University of Georgia), while the costumed character version of Uga is Hairy Dawg. Most of the school's athletic teams are known as the Bulldogs, with the exception of the women's basketball team, known as the "Lady Bulldogs", the women's gymnastics team, known as the "GymDogs", and the team also being referred to as "The Dawgs".
The university sponsors twenty-one sports – baseball, men's and women's basketball, men's and women's cross country, women's equestrian, football, men's and women's golf, women's gymnastics, women's soccer, softball, men's and women's swimming and diving, men's and women's tennis, men's and women's track, and women's volleyball. Those 21 teams have won a combined 52 national championships (including 33 NCAA championships) and 173 Southeastern Conference championships (plus 264 individual national championships through the end of the 2013–14 school year). University students have also won 56 . In 2006, the Bulldogs recorded the highest profit margin of any athletic program in the country (according to the EADA report), pulling in $23.9 million.
"The Georgia Bulldogs would sound good because there is a certain dignity about a bulldog, as well as ferocity."
Shortly thereafter, another news story appeared in the Atlanta Constitution in which the name "Bulldogs" was used several times to describe the Georgia football team, and the nickname has been used ever since then.
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The Georgia Baseball team has seen most of its success in recent years, including winning the 1990 College World Series, as well as making the trip to Omaha in 1987, 1990, 2001, 2004, 2006, and 2008. The Diamond Dawgs, as they are called, are coached by Wes Johnson.
In its history, the team has claimed five Southeastern Conference tournament titles, in 1933, 1954, 1955, 2001, and 2004, and five regular season conference titles, in 1933, 1953, 1954, 2004, and 2008.
The program dates back to 1886 and, according to former Sports Information Director Dan Magill, was once the most popular sport on campus. However, from the mid-1950s to the late-1980s, and then through most of the 1990s, there were only scattered bright spots as the team managed only a modicum of success.
Since 2001, however, the program has enjoyed a resurgence, winning three championships in the Southeastern Conference, and participating in the College World Series four times in those seven seasons.
The Georgia-Georgia Tech baseball rivalry is one of the South's most fierce. The teams' annual Spring Baseball Classic at Turner Field draws some of the largest crowds in college baseball (the 2004 game was seen by 28,836 spectators, the second-largest crowd in college baseball history).
While Dominique Wilkins is considered the greatest player in school history, the team's most successful season came one year after his graduation. The Bulldogs made their first NCAA appearance in 1983 – which would have been Wilkins' senior year had he not opted for the NBA. That team advanced to the Final Four before falling to eventual national champion NC State. Under the Tom Crean regime, the Bulldogs landed the number one recruit in the country in Anthony Edwards in 2018, the highest rated recruit in school history. Edwards would go on to be selected first in the 2020 NBA draft by the Minnesota Timberwolves, the first Georgia basketball player to do so.
Since making its first postseason tournament in 1980, Georgia has received 21 postseason invitations under coaches Hugh Durham, Tubby Smith, Ron Jirsa, Jim Harrick, and Dennis Felton, including 10 trips to the NCAA tournament.
The University of Georgia consistently ranks number 1 in the nation for recruits per National Collegiate Equestrian Association's Coaches' poll.
In January 2009, Georgia riders moved into their spacious new home, the UGA Equestrian Complex, located in Bishop, Georgia. The site is approximately 12 miles south of the Athens, Georgia campus. The 109-acre farm was formerly used in the 1996 Summer Olympics as a training site for the U.S. Dressage Team. The team originally trained and held meets at the Animal Science Arena on South Milledge Avenue. The Animal Science Arena is maintained by University of Georgia's College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences (CAES). As the academic programs grew at CAES, the team relocated to the UGA Equestrian Complex.
The Bulldogs claim four football national championships: one for the 1942 seasons based on the determinations of several selecting organizations, and three consensus national championships for the 1980, 2021, and 2022 seasons based on the votes of the AP and (several selectors have recognized the Bulldogs as national champions for the 1927, 1946, and 1968 seasons as well). Georgia has won 15 Southeastern Conference (SEC) championships (the most recent coming in 2024).
Georgia owns the nations longest active bowl streak at 26, surpassing the previous leader Virginia Tech, who reeled off 27 in a row. The bulldogs are 20–6 in that stretch, excluding the three CFP National Championship games in 2018, 2022, and 2023. In that time period; Georgia has accumulated 3 Peach Bowl victories, 3 Sugar Bowl victories, and a CFP Semi-Final Rose Bowl win to send them to the 2018 CFP National Championship game. Georgia's brand has grown exponentially under coach Kirby Smart, who's pieced together three #1 recruiting classes in his five seasons as Head Coach and led the Bulldogs to the 2021 National Championship victory over Nick Saban's Alabama Crimson Tide team 33–18. The next year, the Bulldogs also won the National Champion over Sonny Dykes' TCU Horned Frogs team 65–7.
The Georgia-Florida game is held annually in late October/early November in Jacksonville, Florida, a site intended to be neutral. However, the game's location is a point of contention for many Georgia fans; many of whom argue that Jacksonville's location relative to the two universities favors Florida. The city lies 342 miles from Athens, Georgia, home of the Bulldogs, but only 73 miles from Gainesville, Florida, home of the Gators. The game is considered a must-do for many UGA students and alumni. The game was traditionally referred to as the "World's Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party" due to the tailgating and celebration by fans, but in recent years the city and universities have dropped the usage to discourage drunkenness among fans. However, fans and former players on both sides of the rivalry still refer to it by that name, or a shortened "Cocktail Party," choosing not to ever use the sanitized "official" name. Georgia holds the all-time advantage in the series, posting a win–loss record of 56–44–2 (55–44–2 according to the University of Florida, which does not include the 1904 game in Macon, Georgia, played before officially sanctioning its football program). The University of Florida closed what was a substantial gap in the series by posting a better overall record in the 1990s and 2000s. Georgia turned the tables in the 2010s, winning 6 of 10, and Georgia leads the series since 2020, winning the last two games. The most recent game in the rivalry was a 42-20 Bulldogs win
Overall, the men's golf team leads all Georgia sports with 29 conference championships, including seven since 2000 (1941, 1950–52, 1957–59, 1961–65, 1969–72, 1977–78, 1982–83, 1988, 1998, 2000–01, 2004, 2006, 2009–10, 2016).
Notable alumni include two-time Masters' champion Bubba Watson, as well as the winner of the 2019 WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play, Kevin Kisner.
Todd McCorkle coached the Georgia women's golf team from 2001 to 2007, when he abruptly resigned before the NCAA Women's Golf Championship under a cloud of sexual harassment allegations. His inaugural UGA team won the national championship. UGA's sixth place tie at the 2006 national event marks the seventh top-10 final ranking in the last nine years. The program has won eleven SEC titles. Former players include Vicki Goetze, now on the LPGA Tour.
The Gymdogs consistently draw upwards of 10,000 fans to their meets, ranking them second only to football in average attendance among Georgia sports.
No Bulldog team has dominated its sport as much in the past 20 years as the Georgia Gymdogs, under the direction of Suzanne Yoculan. On October 18, 2007, Yoculan announced her retirement after the 2009 season. Longtime assistant Jay Clark succeeded Yoculan as head coach from 2009 to 2012. Danna Durante served as head coach from 2012 to 2017. In 2017 former Gymdog Courtney Kupets became the head coach and Suzanne Yoculan became a volunteer assistant coach for the transition period.
The squad has won 32 Southeastern Conference championships, 25 regular season championships and seven SEC tournament championships.
The NCAA Men's Tennis Championship has been held in Athens 24 times in the past 35 years, including consecutively from 1977 to 1989 and in 2007. All but one (2008) of UGA's NCAA team championships have been won in Athens.
Former UGA coach Petros Kyprianou guided the UGA men's track and field team to the 2018 NCAA men's Division I Outdoor Track and Field Championship title.
Notable UGA women's track and field athletes include Olympic gold medalists Gwen Torrence and Shaunae Miller-Uibo, silver medalist Hyleas Fountain, and bronze medalist Debbie Ferguson.
The UGA Rugby Club won the 1979 Savannah St. Patrick's Day Rugby Tournament.
Below are 19 national team titles in varsity sports that were not bestowed by the NCAA.
Note: Georgia's website has multiple pages which list national championships by sport; before the 2021 football title victory, it only called out one season for football (1980). Pre-2022 Georgia football media guides contain a year-by-year results section in which five seasons (1980) have "National Champions#" headers paired with selector callouts, but also a "Championship History" page which pairs 1942 and 1980 into a "The Consensus National Champions" section and groups 1927, 1946, and 1968 together as national champions without description, beyond identification of those specific selectors.
° = co-champions, t = tournament
The firestorm has calmed slightly since then, however, largely due to the success of Dooley's successor, Damon Evans. In 2006, the Bulldogs recorded the highest profit margin of any athletic program in the country (according to the EADA report), pulling in $23.9 million, and also recorded another highly successful year on the field. However, Evans was arrested for DUI on June 30, 2010; his passenger, a 28-year-old woman, was arrested for disorderly conduct who told police that she had been seeing Evans for about one week. Evans has been asked for his resignation effective on Monday, July 5, 2010, and he has agreed to resign.
Damon Evans was replaced by Greg McGarity, a Georgia alum and Associate AD at the University of Florida, in 2010. McGarity's tenure as Georgia's AD was one that saw a great surge in fundraising prowess. In 2015, McGarity made the controversial decision to fire long time Head Coach, Mark Richt. He then hired Alabama Defensive Coordinator Kirby Smart as Richt's replacement. Smart went on to win back-to-back College football National Championships.
Greg McGarity retired at the end of 2020 and was replaced in the summer of 2021 by Josh Brooks, who is the athletic director of record for the Bulldogs' 2022 College Football Playoff National Championship win. McGarity brought Brooks back to UGA from Louisiana-Monroe to essentially make him the Athletic Director in waiting.
Despite being overshadowed by its football program, the Georgia Bulldogs basketball team has produced several notable players that went on to be successful in the NBA. In 2020, Georgia freshman Anthony Edwards was selected first overall in the 2020 NBA draft, becoming the first Bulldog to do so. The Bulldogs boast three U.S. Olympians (Vern Fleming, Willie Anderson, Anthony Edwards), with Fleming and Edwards eventually each earning gold medal. Other notable alumni include Dominique Wilkins, 9-time NBA All-Star whose number 21 was retired by the Atlanta Hawks, as well as Shandon Anderson, Jarvis Hayes, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, Nic Claxton, and Toumani Camara. In total, 24 Bulldogs have progressed to playing in the NBA.
The Lady Dogs basketball team has produced two U.S. Olympians who have combined to earn six Gold Medals (Teresa Edwards and Katrina McClain Johnson), 16 former players who have continued to the WNBA (second-most nationally), and six WNBA first-round draft picks in the past five years (second-most nationally). There were eight Lady Bulldogs on WNBA rosters in 2006: Kara Braxton, Detroit Shock; Kedra Holland-Corn, Detroit Shock; Deanna Nolan, Detroit Shock; Kelly Miller, Phoenix Mercury; Coco Miller, Washington Mystics; Christi Thomas, Los Angeles Sparks; Sherill Baker, New York Liberty; and Kiesha Brown, New York Liberty.
The Bulldogs baseball team has seen several of its former players move on to successful professional careers, most notably former New York Yankees pitcher Spud Chandler. Also, St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Cris Carpenter (not to be confused with current Cardinals pitcher Chris Carpenter), pitcher Derek Lilliquist, Chicago White Sox batter Gordon Beckham, Seattle Mariners pitcher Dave Fleming, and Georgia high school football coaching legend Billy Henderson played for the Bulldogs.
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