No Bevo vs. UGA rematch! Why isn’t Georgia mascot making the trip to Austin for Texas game?

Bevo won’t get another shot at Uga. Georgia’s mascot will not travel to Austin for the game against Texas.

There will not be a Bevo vs. Uga round 2.

Uga XI, nicknamed “Boom,” will not make the trip to Austin for the Georgia vs. Texas game. The mascot’s handler, Charles Seiler, says 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, which is over 200 miles away from Athens, where the university is located. Seiler says the almost 5 hour trip to Athens to meet up with the team’s plane, plus the two hour flight would be too much for the English Bulldog.

This will be second road trip Uga XI has missed this season. The pup also skipped the Kentucky game.

“That’s a lot of wear and tear on the dog,” Seiler told the Austin American-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.”

Seiler, who is 64 years old, says 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.”

Of course, Bevo and Uga have history. Although it wasn’t this version of Uga that Bevo attached at the 2019 Sugar Bowl. That was Uga X, nicknamed “Que.” Sadly, Uga X passed away on January 23, 2024, at the age of 10.

Back in 2019, there was definitely an effort to show off two of the most famous live mascots together. Earlier that week, the two met but weren’t allowed to interact.

Things didn’t go so well when the decision was made to get them together on the sideline before the game for a photo op. Uga was brought by golf cart over near Bevo. Metal barricades, that were not secured to the ground, served as Bevo’s pen. As a confused Uga made his way to the Texas Mascot, Bevo suddenly charged through the barricades horns first. Basically, the Texas mascot tried to gore the Georgia Mascot.

The incident was caught live on the Longhorn Network. The pregame announcers were actually doing play-by-play of the meeting. Uga’s handler did a good job of getting the pooch out of the way, while Bevo’s handlers, the Silver Spurs, desperately struggled to hang on.

ESPN wrote an interesting ‘Oral history of when Bevo charged Uga at the Sugar Bowl‘ this week.