Frank Sinkwich was the first great Georgia football superstar, winning a Heisman Trophy in 1942. But he wasn’t Georgia’s first national superstar.
That distinction belongs to Charley Trippi. Perhaps the only quintuple-threat athlete college football has ever seen. Trippi excelled as a pre-modern running back in Wally Butts’s innovative passing offense. He could run, pass and catch all over any defense, and he also returned kickoffs and punts, and play defense. Would that not make Charley a septuple-threat then?
Trippi starred alongside Sinkwich on the 1942 Georgia Football team which won Georgia’s first consensus National Championship.