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Texas vs Georgia: Live mascot Uga won’t travel to game, share field with Bevo. Here’s why

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Texas vs Georgia: Live mascot Uga won’t travel to game, share field with Bevo. Here’s why

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Georgia mascot Uga, an English Bulldog, won’t be making the trip to Austin for this Saturday’s game between Texas football and Georgia, according to the mascot’s handler, Charles Seiler.

It’s the second trip Uga XI has missed this year, having also sat out Georgia’s game against Kentucky.

Of course, the Georgia and Texas mascots have some history. At the Sugar Bowl in 2019, Bevo ‒ Texas’ live Longhorn mascot ‒ charged through a barricade toward Uga, sending the Bulldog and members of the press scampering away. That incident involved Uga X, Georgia’s last mascot, and the current Bevo.

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Seiler said the decision not to travel to Saturday’s game was based on logistics, rather than a hesitance to reunite with Bevo.

Uga lives in Savannah, Georgia ‒ not Athens, where the university is located. Seiler estimates that it would take him five hours to journey to Athens to meet up with Georgia’s team plane for a flight that would then take at least another two hours.

“That’s a lot of wear and tear on the dog,” he told the Statesman. “…Those games way out in the middle of the country are hard for us to get to. This dog that we have ‒ well, he’s not new ‒ but he’s only two-and-a-half, and we haven’t flown him yet, and he hasn’t been on a team bus yet.”

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At 64, Seiler said he also has to consider the impact lengthy travel has on him.

“Maybe when I was a younger man, I could do that,” he said. “But my wife says that’s a no-go.”

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