Georgia unable to land musical act for G-Day
Georgia officials had hoped to bring a big-time musical act to Sanford Stadium to play prior to the start of Saturday’s G-Day game, but that won’t be happening.
According to athletic director Greg McGarity, school officials worked feverishly to bring a well-known act to play for fans, but between artists’ schedules and the allotted time they would be able to play, it just didn’t work out.
"We were trying to work on something special," McGarity said. "But we’ve got this time to fill, the whole time frame we had was once the team left the field for pre-game warm-ups, you have about a 15-minute time before they come out for warmups."
McGarity said his staff shot for the moon.
Although he declined to give names, it’s believed that country music singers Luke Bryan, the Zac Brown Band and Thomas Rhett were among those asked about the possibility but their schedules simply did not allow for it.
“We really did try. So much of its verbal but when it came down to execute contracts or do things in between that’s when things fell through,” McGarity said. “When you really start talking about well, let’s go ahead and get a draft of a contract it really never got to that point. Some acts are in Charleston this weekend, some are in Philadelphia … we went pretty deep, our staff really tried to pull it off, but that 15 minutes of time was problematic for a number of them, but that’s all we had.”
Despite no musical act, gates at Sanford Stadium will still open at 1 p.m. for Saturday’s game, set to kick off at 4 p.m. and to be televised on ESPNU.
Festivities are set to begin at 1:15 with the annual Alumni Flag Football game, followed by Dawg Walk at 2:45. The pre-game festivities will include a special video on the beginning of the Kirby Smart era and feature some never before seen video from behind the scenes of Georgia football.
Although fans will not be charged admission, they are asked to make a monetary donation to the Northeast Georgia Food Bank.
McGarity said he did not believe the absence of a musical would hurt attendance for the game.
“I think people are coming to watch the game anyhow. We did not announce that this was going to happen,” McGarity said. “I know one of our staff members (Associate AD for Event Management Matt Brachowski) talked about it a little bit, and we were working and thought we were really close to having some things there, but it just couldn’t be worked out with the entertainers’ schedule on the weekend and for 15 minutes. That was a tough thing to overcome.”