Opey McCorkle

Opey McCorkle is a judge and politically influential University of Georgia alumnus whose learning and public standing coexist with exuberant, often bawdy humor and fierce college-football partisanship. At dinner, he amplifies the table’s laughter; when the subject turns to academic standards for football players, he becomes a forceful opponent of the new coach’s policy. His scenes make him both a comic presence and a revealing embodiment of the rivalry-driven loyalties surrounding Georgia football.

Identity and Background

McCorkle studied at the University of Georgia as both an undergraduate and a law student. He is a learned man and a great reader, but his favorite book is Clean Old-fashioned Hate, devoted entirely to the Georgia–Georgia Tech football rivalry. He keeps it on his bedside table, a detail that makes his devotion a fixture of private life as well as public identity.

His influence extends beyond fandom: as a politician with considerable clout in southwestern Georgia, he can secure blocks of seats on the fifty-yard line whether the Bulldogs play at Sanford Stadium in Athens or Georgia Tech’s Bobby Dodd Stadium in Atlanta. The access reflects his regional standing, while the choice of seats places him close to the spectacle he follows so intensely.

Humor at the Dinner Table

During a dinner-table exchange, Billy Bass jokes about a party for AIDS, and McCorkle joins the escalating riff by adding herpes to its list of imagined causes for celebration. His contribution is brief, but it shows how readily he enters the group’s bawdy comedy. Charlie Croker joins in as well, and the episode presents McCorkle as a participant in the table’s male camaraderie rather than a detached observer.

The scene also establishes a contrast in his manner: McCorkle can be a learned reader and a public figure, yet his humor at dinner is deliberately coarse. The comic exchange depends on the company’s shared willingness to push the joke further, and he helps carry that momentum.

Football Oratory and the 2.5 Standard

Later, after drinking brown whiskey, Gewürztraminer, and corn liquor, McCorkle launches into an oration about Georgia Tech football. He addresses Beauchamp Knox across the gathering, speaking loudly enough to turn his complaint into a performance for the table. His immediate grievance is the new coach, whom he regards as self-important and idealistic, and a rule barring any player who fails to complete all coursework with at least a 2.5 average from playing for the Bulldogs that fall.

McCorkle says he believes in education and high standards at the university, but he rejects the premise that those standards should determine who plays football. To him, football and education have never belonged together. The contradiction is central to his outburst: his professed respect for academic standards gives way when they threaten the team’s lineup. He is not arguing for a different threshold; he is resisting the idea that coursework should constrain the sport at all.

Rivalry and Characterization

McCorkle’s attachment to the rivalry reaches back to its earliest remembered grievance in his favorite book: the first Georgia–Georgia Tech game, in 1893, ended amid accusations that the opposing side had used nonstudent ringers and chants alleging that the umpire was cheating. That account of suspicion and partisan outrage belongs to the tradition he cherishes, and his own anger at the coach places him in its continuing line of loyal, combative supporters.

Together, the bedside book, the coveted fifty-yard-line seats, and the dinner-table speech show different forms of the same allegiance. McCorkle is not merely interested in football; he treats its rivalries and customs as a governing passion. His comic performance makes that devotion entertaining, while his indignation over the 2.5 requirement reveals its cost: institutional education matters to him in principle, but the team’s competitive life takes precedence when the two appear to conflict.