Dawgs' Best Friends

Amid fast-food wrappers, video-game gear and other bachelor-pad debris in an Athens, Ga., apartment, scattered photographs tell the story of a friendship. Two boys, one pale and squinting, the other big-boned and bright-eyed, stand shoulder-to-shoulder among a pack of peewee football players. Two teenagers, wearing fishing gear and goofy grins, hoist a shimmering amberjack for the camera. Two young men, tall and proud in coats and ties, hook the waists of two pretty girls. The scenery changes with each frame, but the characters remain the same.

David Greene, Georgia's starting quarterback, and David Pollack, the Bulldogs' star defensive end, are about as close as two college guys can be. They share an MP3 player loaded with Kenny Chesney, and a portrait signed (GO DAWGS!) by Faith Hill. They bust each other when they're feeling good—Pollack rags on Greene's Amish-kid haircut, Greene on Pollack's motormouth—and boost each other during low periods. They are lifelong best friends, teammates from the age of six and highlight-reel regulars since last year, when Greene was named to the all-SEC first team and Pollack was the conference's player of the year. They're also twin points of light for Georgia followers, whose moods fluctuate with their team's poll standing—which, after last Saturday's 27-8 win over Vanderbilt, was a healthy No. 4 in the BCS rankings.

On a recent Monday the Davids, as they're called by their families and by Georgia sports staffers, took a pass on the dubious contents of their Frigidaire and lunched at the local Chili's. As Greene excused himself from the table for a moment, a star-struck waiter congratulated Pollack on the Bulldogs' latest win and fumbled for the order pad. "A burger for me," said Pollack, scanning the three-page menu, "and you can ask him, but knowing Greeney, he's gonna go for that chicken sandwich." Five seconds later Greene folded his rangy passer's frame into the booth beside Pollack, considered his options and went for the chicken sandwich. Pollack shrugged. "When you've known each other as long as we have," he said, "you just know."

For 21 years the lives of Georgia's two best players have been as parallel as uprights. Three days in June 1982 separated Pollack's birth in New Brunswick, N.J., and Greene's in suburban Atlanta. Soon afterward Norm and Kelli Pollack moved David and his older brother (by two years), Jason, to Snellville, Ga., about three miles from where Rick and Kay Greene were raising their son and his older sister (by two years), Leslie. In Snellville, social networks often grow from church and football affiliations, so the two families became acquainted in 1988, at the first practice of the Shiloh Generals youth-league team. Even then the boys' personalities were distinct. " David Greene was a little doll-baby, as well-behaved as they come," recalls Kelli. "Our Davey was the kid you had to lock in the bathroom with you when you were showering for fear he'd get into something. He would go a million miles an hour and then fall asleep in his soup." The Generals' coaches, including Norm and Rick, played the boys to their strengths. The deliberate David would throw the ball; the restless David would run it.

That autumn marked the beginning of a friendship founded on sports. The boys earned five straight county youth-football championships together and were also AAU basketball teammates. ( Greene, who played point guard, says that Pollack, the center, "assigned himself to knock our opponents into the bleachers.") When their families made their annual trips to Florida's Mexico Beach or St. George's Island together, the Davids played paddle-ball marathons that stretched into dinnertime. "They would hit that rubber ball back and forth for hours," says Norm, weary at the memory. "Everything was a competition."

The competition heated up when the boys, divided by district, attended rival high schools. Greene landed at South Gwinnett, and Pollack, who started grade school a year behind his friend, went to Shiloh a year later. Each got off to a slow start—Greene's team went 0-10 in his first season as a starter; Pollack wasn't full-time varsity until his junior year—but both were named first team all-state seniors. Still, the thought of playing major college football hardly occurred to the pair until the recruiting letters started showing up. "We were just a couple of kids, no better than others, who grew up going to sports camps with our buddies," says Pollack.

"There was never pressure," Greene adds, "just the love of playing ball."

Jim Donnan, then the Georgia coach, saw that both players had the promise to match their passion, and he recruited Greene in 2000 and Pollack in '01. After redshirting as a freshman, Greene learned that the Dawgs were scouting his friend and offered to host Pollack on his official visit. Pollack also considered Florida, especially after Donnan was fired by Georgia that winter, but a weekend with Greene sealed the deal. "It was like we hadn't skipped a beat," says Greene.

At Georgia the Davids' arrival helped spark a Bulldogs revival. Greene was ready to shed his redshirt and Pollack was about to sign with the team when Mark Richt, the seven-year offensive coordinator at Florida State, replaced Donnan. As Richt has transformed Georgia from a merely above-average SEC team into a national power, he has credited the dedication of players such as—well, his starting quarterback and defensive end. "They've been the glue," the coach says. "When your best players are also great students and citizens, you're in good shape."

Greene was the first to make an impact. Six months after he was introduced to Richt's complex pro-style offense, the boy who'd lost his breakfast before big-stakes high school games faced his first road test, in October 2001 in front of a crowd of 107,592 at Tennessee, where the Bulldogs hadn't won since 1980. Unfazed, Greene engineered a last-minute touchdown drive to give Georgia a 26-24 win. By year's end he had passed for 2,789 yards and 17 touchdowns, both school records for a freshman, and earned a reputation for poise and leadership.