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Mark Schlabach
Multiple Authors
TIGER, Ga. — Travelers passing Rabun County’s most famous roadside attraction, G.O.A.T., a quirky general store formerly known as Goats on the Roof, don’t have to venture far off U.S. Route 441 to find a tribute to another G.O.A.T. — a quarterback whom folks in the area still consider the greatest of all time.
The sign sits on a hillside on the Tiger Connector, which links the highway to the small north Georgia town that covers less than a square mile and has a population of fewer than 500.
Its message might be a little much for the gator-trapping, deer-hunting, wanna-be-cow-farming quarterback who broke or threatened nearly every Georgia prep passing and scoring record at Rabun County High School before taking his talents — and his classic 1984 Ford F-150 with its four-on-the-floor manual transmission — to the state’s flagship university.
“Go Dawgs: Go Gunner! Gunner Stockton He1SM4N”
Stockton has never sought the spotlight, but he’ll be back in it Saturday night when he leads No. 2 Georgia into an SEC showdown at No. 6 Alabama (7:30 ET, ABC).
“If you know him, he’s just a good freakin’ kid,” said Joel Johnson, owner of the Rusty Bike Cafe in nearby Clayton. “If you see him on TV, you’d never know that was him if you met him in real life. He’s a good boy. He’s down to earth.”
Jerry Taylor, owner of Georgia Mountain Roofing, erected the sign a few weeks ago after getting permission from Stockton’s family. His wife, Kelly, came up with the idea.
“He’s a hometown hero,” Taylor said. “He’s such a great young man with great character. He’s a hard worker. He could drive anything he wanted, but his parents are trying to instill values in him.”
After leading Georgia to a 12-2 record and its second straight SEC title in his first season as a starter in 2025, Stockton has performed even better this year. He has completed 75.5% of his passes for 1,049 yards with 13 touchdowns and one interception in five games.
Stockton will face his stiffest test against Alabama, which limited him to 130 passing yards in a 24-21 loss last season, which ended Georgia’s 33-game home winning streak.
The senior is coming off one of his best performances in last week’s 38-14 win against Vanderbilt, in which he threw for 295 yards with three touchdowns on 25-for-32 passing.
“I’m certainly very happy and pleased with where Gunner is as a player,” Bulldogs coach Kirby Smart said. “I think experience helps. I think experience matters. I think how people play around you matters. I think [the] game plan and what you’re asked to do, not asking the quarterback to do more than he needs to do, is important.
“Gunner’s done a tremendous job of that. He played a really, really good game the other day, and I was really happy for him because of how hard he works at it. He’s got to continue to get better to give us a chance to get where we want to go.”
While Stockton looks to lead Georgia to the College Football Playoff national championship for the first time since the team’s back-to-back titles in 2022 and 2021, he has made an impression on a wide range of people along the way, from baseball teammates to UGA royalty.
‘He was just a bulldog’
Before Stockton became a record-setting quarterback at Rabun County High, he was a cleanup hitter, catcher and starting pitcher for the East Cobb Astros.
Stockton played for the famed travel ball team from Marietta, Georgia, from ages 10 to 14. He was surrounded by some future major leaguers.
Outfielder James Tibbs III was a first-round pick of the San Francisco Giants in 2024 and is now one of the Los Angeles Dodgers’ top 10 prospects. Bubba Chandler was a third-round selection in 2021 and pitched his first full season in the majors with the Pittsburgh Pirates this year. Outfielder Kristian Campbell was a fourth-rounder in 2023 and played 67 games for the Boston Red Sox only two years later.
“Still to this day, he’s one of the best catchers I’ve ever played with,” said Tibbs, who hit .287 with 30 homers and 107 RBIs with Triple-A Oklahoma City this season. “He’s just a hard-nosed kid. The qualities he has as a quarterback now, he was the same way on a baseball field. You never saw him show emotion, never saw him get mad. He just was the same guy every single day.”
The teammates became especially close after Stockton moved in with Tibbs’ family during the summers, so Stockton’s parents didn’t have to make a two-hour drive each way for practices and games. Eventually, Tibbs’ parents finished their basement, so Stockton’s family could stay with him as well.
Tibbs recalled an Astros pitcher crossing up Stockton during a game.
“The heater hit him right in the chest,” Tibbs said. “He just didn’t even move, didn’t even budge. He was pissed off, but nobody knew it because he just took it on the chin and kept going. The irony is he was just a bulldog. It was kind of the mentality that you saw from him at an early age, something that the rest of us had to develop.”
Brian McDevitt, one of the coaches at East Cobb, said Stockton wanted to pitch when the stakes were the highest.
“He played baseball all those years just like he’s playing football now,” McDevitt said. “There was never a moment or game too big for him. He always wanted the ball in the biggest situations and biggest games, and he still does today.”
Stockton also demanded a lot from his teammates without having to say so.
“He made everyone around him better,” McDevitt said. “They all knew they had to up their game, just as they do on the football field now.”
While Stockton gave up travel ball to focus on football, he was named a MaxPreps All-American in baseball as a freshman and sophomore at Rabun County High. Much of his junior season was wiped out by the COVID-19 pandemic, and he graduated early as a senior to enroll at UGA.
“There were no holes in his game,” Tibbs said. “As far as I’m concerned, if he had chosen to just stay with baseball and didn’t want to play football, he would have been a Division I baseball player.”
‘Kirby said he’s coming to Georgia’
While Stockton grew up a Georgia fan, he committed to play at South Carolina in August 2020.
At the time, Stockton was one of the most highly recruited players in the state. As a high school sophomore, he threw for 3,743 yards with 43 touchdowns and ran for 1,126 yards with 19 scores.
Stockton’s connection to then-Gamecocks offensive coordinator Mike Bobo was deep. Bobo’s father, George, a longtime high school coach, had retired to the north Georgia mountains. He helped Stockton develop as a passer at a young age.
Stockton had hunted and fished with Mike Bobo’s son, Drew, when he spent time with his grandparents.
Having a chance to play for Mike Bobo and then-Gamecocks coach Will Muschamp, a former Georgia defensive back, was too good to pass up for Stockton. Plus, one of his favorite quarterbacks was former South Carolina star Connor Shaw, whose brother, Jaybo, was his football coach at Rabun County High.
Smart didn’t give up easily.
Allyn Stockton, Gunner’s uncle, recalled visiting with Sonny Smart, the Georgia coach’s late father, in the parking lot after a Rabun County High football game.
“Coach, please tell Kirby not to give up on Gunner,” Allyn said. “I don’t want him to go to South Carolina.”
“Oh, Kirby said he’s coming to Georgia,” Sonny Smart said.
“This was before there were any cracks in the situation at South Carolina,” Allyn recalled. “He said it with so much confidence.”
The Gamecocks parted ways with Muschamp on Nov. 15, 2020, after his teams went 28-30 in four-plus seasons. Bobo was named the Gamecocks’ interim coach.
South Carolina hired Shane Beamer, then Oklahoma’s assistant head coach for offense, as Muschamp’s replacement a few weeks later. After weighing whether to stay at South Carolina, Bobo agreed to become new Auburn coach Bryan Harsin’s offensive coordinator on Jan. 7, 2021.
Stockton decommitted to South Carolina and seemed headed to Auburn.
Then Smart stepped in again. He had kept an open line of communication with Stockton, and now he was ready to talk to his parents again.
“How are you going to feel when you’re in Auburn and Mike Bobo’s in Athens?” Smart told them.
Stockton committed to play for Georgia on Jan. 12, 2021.
Sonny Smart sent Allyn Stockton a text message that day: “Go Dogs. Good decision.”
Kirby Smart’s advice proved to be prophetic. Bobo lasted only one season as Auburn’s offensive coordinator. He returned to Georgia, his alma mater, as an offensive analyst in 2022. After Bulldogs offensive coordinator Todd Monken left for the NFL, Bobo returned to calling offensive plays for the Bulldogs the next season.
Drew Bobo is now Georgia’s starting center and one of Stockton’s best friends.
‘If he opens his mouth, people stop’
Before Stockton left home for college, his uncle Allyn encouraged him to watch a particular scene from the 1988 film, “Bull Durham.”
As the Durham Bulls celebrated a victory during their bus ride to another minor league town, rookie pitcher Nuke LaLoosh asked veteran catcher Crash Davis to teach him something new. Davis told him to pull out a notebook.
“It’s time to work on your interviews,” Davis said.
“My interviews?” LaLoosh said. “What have I got to do?”
“You’re going to have to work on your clichés,” Davis said. “You’re going to have to study them. You’re going to have to know them. They’re your friends.”
They also were part of every sports reporter’s nightmares: “We’ve got to play them one day at a time.” “I’m just happy to be here.” “I hope I can help the ballclub.” “I just want to give it my best shot, and the good Lord willing, things will work out.”
Much to Kirby Smart’s delight — and reporters’ chagrin — Stockton has taken the lesson to heart.
“He isn’t the guy that’s going to tell the funniest joke in the locker room,” said Rob Stockton, Gunner’s father. “They know he’s there and they know he cares. People that talk a lot, they use a lot of words. What John Doe would say in 150 words, Gunner is going to say it in 15. I think that’s a talent of his.
“Some people don’t know when to be quiet; he’s never been one that’s had to be told to be quiet.”
Allyn Stockton also advised his nephew to watch “Talladega Nights” so he could learn how to use his hands in interviews like the fictitious NASCAR driver Ricky Bobby.
As far as Rob Stockton knows, his son isn’t trying to breathe through his eyelids like the lava lizards of the Galapagos Islands, another potential lesson from “Bull Durham.”
“I absolutely love Gunner’s way that if he opens his mouth, people stop and they’re going to listen because he’s going to say something of importance,” Rob Stockton said. “I think it’s the coolest thing ever.”
‘He’s the whole package’
Last month, during Barbara Dooley’s weekly appearance on an Atlanta sports-talk radio show, one of the hosts asked the widow of Georgia legend Vince Dooley if Stockton was dating one of her family members.
“Yeah, my granddaughter,” said Barbara, who was married to the former Bulldogs football coach and athletic director for 62 years until his death in 2022. “And if he doesn’t marry her, I’m going to run him out of town.”
Almost immediately, former Tennessee coach Derek Dooley got word of what his mother said. He called Rob and Sherrie Stockton, and then his mother.
“Mother, you have never learned to think before you say anything,” Derek said to her. “Why would you say that on the radio?”
“You know my mouth,” Barbara said. “I just don’t think about what I’m doing. I just say what I think, and that’s what I said.”
Gunner Stockton has been dating Julianna Dooley, Derek and Allison Dooley’s daughter, for more than five years.
There were already connections between the families. Derek Dooley hired Tommy Spangler, the defensive coordinator at Georgia Southern when Rob Stockton played there in the 1990s, when he was hired as Louisiana Tech’s coach in 2007.
Vince and Barbara Dooley owned a vacation home at Lake Burton in Rabun County, where they were neighbors with former Alabama coach Nick Saban, former Cardinals and Titans coach Ken Whisenhunt, former UGA and NFL quarterback Fran Tarkenton and the Stocktons.
Derek Dooley offered Gunner Stockton a scholarship when he was Missouri’s offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach in 2018 and 2019.
Shortly after Derek Dooley joined the New York Giants as a senior offensive assistant in 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic shut down New York. His family moved to his parents’ lake retreat, and he reconnected with Rob Stockton while buying a truck.
Rob invited the Dooleys to dinner. Gunner and Julianna started dating shortly thereafter.
Barbara Dooley might have been only half joking about what she said on the radio.
“I love Gunner,” she said. “He is the whole package. He is humble. He is kind. I mean, he is loyal to Georgia. He would never leave for money, I can tell you that. He is an amazing young man.”
Stockton is the kind of hard-nosed quarterback Barbara’s late husband would have loved. Vince Dooley guided the Bulldogs to the 1980 national championship and six SEC titles during his 25-year tenure from 1964 to 1988.
“I love his interviews after the game,” Barbara said. “‘Gunner, how was that play?’ ‘Well, it was a team effort. Everybody played so well.’ He never says, ‘I.’ It’s always about the team.”
