GT athletics
THE BISH
Legendary sports writer Furman Bisher’s relationship with Georgia Tech athletics has spanned six decades – and continues even at age 92
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By Wayne Hogan
The charter plane sat on the tarmac fully loaded with Georgia Tech football players, coaches and staff. In some ways, 50 years ago, things weren’t all that different from today for college football teams, including Tech. The scenario is the same. The team plays a game on the road, players shower, pack up their gear, media interviews are concluded and the travel party heads directly to the nearest airport for the return flight home. But this particular day, players sat quietly in their seats and coaches fidgeted. The equipment and personal luggage had been loaded, the engines warmed up and everyone was anxious to get back home to Atlanta. But there was one passenger absent. Left back at the stadium to finish a most important game day task, this passenger would catch a ride to the airport and meet the team for the flight home. Everyone waiting on the plane understood the importance of this final task and though the delay was perhaps annoying, no one would dare express that notion. Ten, maybe 15 minutes ticked off and suddenly appearing at the airplane’s front door was a breathless man, loaded down with a heavy briefcase stuffed with paperwork and the tool of his trade – a typewriter. Furman Bisher had just finished filing his story on another Georgia Tech victory – a story that would be the lead in the Sunday morning Atlanta Journal and Constitution. In those days, Bisher – as did many sports editors / columnists around the south – comfortably traveled with the football team. It was comfortable in those days because these journalistic icons were almost considered a part of the organization. Nothing illuminates this relationship more clearly than when Georgia Tech named Bisher an “Honorary Member of the 1951-52 Football Team.” I had a similar experience during my tenure as sports information director at Florida State University. A Bisher protégé named Bill Mc-
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The Buzz
The press corps at the 1953 Sugar Bowl in New Orleans, featuring Bisher (seated on the floor, front and center). Head coach Bobby Dodd is also in the photo. Grotha had been the sports editor of the Tallahassee Democrat for more than 40 years. His relationship to the FSU football team and its coaches through the years was nothing short of complete emersion. McGrotha had free reign to roam the football offices, use personal phone numbers of all of the coaches and key players, he was the first to know when any type of breaking news occurred. On many occasions the head football coach would call the writer to alert him of impending news within the program. Surprisingly, in Tallahassee, this cozy relationship lasted all the way into the early 90’s. Oh, how the media has changed! Not only did McGrotha travel with the team, his seat on the airplane was directly next to the head coach. That’s right…head coaches including Bobby Bowden sat side by side with the local sports editor on every team trip for decades. There were several times that the team charter
was delayed while McGrotha filed his column for the Sunday paper. Ah, those were the days,” Bisher sighed during a sit-down at his Fayetteville, Ga., home recently. Retired now after nearly 60 years with the Atlanta Journal and Constitution, Bisher has fond memories of those glory days with the Georgia Tech program and legendary coach Bobby Dodd. “When I first came to Atlanta in 1950 there were two sports stories in the city that meant something: Georgia Tech football and the Atlanta Crackers baseball team,” Bisher said. “My goodness, having a ticket in the west stands at Grant Field was like being at the Metropolitan Opera. It was a signal of great stature. It was Atlanta’s upper crust.” It was a time when newspapers were enormously popular as well. People hung on every word printed in the local papers. It may be hard to believe, but there was a great respect
and trust for journalists in the day. Sportswriters and columnists were celebrities. Coaches and athletes knew well the importance of the media in the culture. In most cases the relationship was more than cordial. The adversarial stuff of today didn’t come along until much later…about the time of Woodward and Bernstein in the 1970’s. Reporters in the Dodd years enjoyed chronicling the success of the teams they covered – almost openly rooting for their teams to win because it made for a grander story, bigger headlines and bigger readership. Its hard to imagine there being two more recognizable sports figures in Atlanta in the 1950s and 60s than Bobby Dodd and Furman Bisher. Although in very different professions, they were cast together through so many great Georgia Tech moments. Bisher describes the relationship as friendly, professional, sometimes social, almost always fun.