After 49 years, Central QB Mike Jolly talks title runs and legacies after Northeast championship appearance

Back in the day, they called them the Big Orange.

They were still Central Chargers, of course, but the football team had a fervent enough fan base to garner an affectionate nickname of that nature.

After all, the Central squads of the 1970s were dominant — first led by head coach Goot Steiner, who came on when it was still known as Lanier High School, then by Georgia high school football deity Gene Brodie after Steiner’s death, the Big Orange were regularly one of Georgia’s strongest teams.

The Chargers played for the state title in 1972 and lost to Lakeside under Steiner, then won the 1975 AAA championship under Brodie’s leadership. They made the semifinals twice in the early ‘70s, establishing themselves as a force to be reckoned with on the gridiron.

Yes, the Big Orange were for real, especially in that 1975 trophy season. 

It’s still the most recent championship for a Bibb County public school. In fact, Central was the last school to even appear in, much less win, a title game until the Northeast Raiders reached the finals this year.

As such, the Chargers earned a mythic status among longtime Maconites. Coach Brodie’s name is still uttered by Bibb County lifers with reverence, even though he only coached a handful of seasons in town before moving to Tift County to become a legend.

But one player — and one particular play he made that sent the Big Orange all the way to a state trophy — looms largest in the history books.

A cog in a dynasty

Mike Jolly, the quarterback for the 1975 Central  championship team, is an aptly amicable fellow.

He’s not jolly in a way that evokes Santa Claus, let it be clear. The 66-year-old former football icon — he’ll be 67 the first week of January — is simply jovial, regularly letting out hardy laughs as he recounts his days as a member of the Big Orange.

The quarterback remembers hard hits, coaching snafus and fumbles. He also talks fondly of playing defense, something he stopped doing after Brodie and the other coaches realized how talented he was in the backfield.

“I used to love playing defense, I was pretty disappointed when they took me off being out there every snap of the game,” Jolly said.

Not to worry. Jolly had a solution.

“If it was a game where we were giving it to ’em, a four-score game in the fourth quarter? I would heave that thing up. I would let a guy intercept it, just so I could hit ’em,” he said, laughing. “I was a running quarterback, so I’d already be running before I threw the ball. So once they caught it… I could be right on top of ’em. I probably shouldn’t have done that, but I loved to hit ’em.”

Stories like this — ones clearly looked back on and retold with passion for the game of football — pop up constantly as Jolly talks about the dominant Central team he led in 1975. The team was known for having close calls in many games, falling behind early to necessitate nail-biting comebacks in the fourth quarter.

Naturally, the championship was won the same way. With Jolly at the helm, the Chargers fell behind Douglass in the third quarter of the title game. Jolly led the way down the field in the fourth, scoring a touchdown to give Central a 21-14 upset win for their first state championship since 1948.

“It had to be this way,” Coach Brodie told The Telegraph after the win one December night in ‘75. “We had to come back to win it. Hell, we’ve been coming back since the start of the season.”

Jolly will be remembered for the game-winning drive, certainly: a 76-yard, 10-play romp down the field in which he rushed and passed to guide Central to a trophy.

But more memorable than entire drives, most would agree, are single plays. And Jolly had one of those, too.

“It was the quarterfinals everyone talks about… I got kind of sick of it, people asking me about that one,” Jolly joked. “But that fourth-and-20 play, that’s what people would talk (or) stop me on the street about.”

Two rounds before the championship win over Douglass, the Big Orange clashed with the Northside Eagles of Warner Robins. Though the Eagles were not Central’s archenemy, it was a rivalry that commanded serious attention all the same — in fact, the Chargers had lost to Northside on Homecoming just two weeks earlier. It was dreadful, according to Jolly.

The Eagles, like many other teams, led Central late in the game. Facing a fourth-and-long on the final drive, it looked like the Chargers would come up short after a holding penalty pushed it even further back.

“I remember we actually got the first down when we first ran the play, then the holding penalty just ruined it and I put my hands on my head,” Jolly said.“I said, ‘I guess it’s my time to lay down the hammer.’”

The Orange needed 20 yards for the first down. Jolly earned every one of them and then some to give Central a 21-19 win. It’s remembered as a miraculous run, one where the quarterback shed tackle after tackle to surpass the chains.

“It was kind of a blur, I guess. They say I broke four or five tackles,” Jolly recalled. “I really don’t remember (the whole play), but I do know those last two or three guys I hit? I ran them over.”

‘I really can’t complain’

The incredible game-winning run against Northside and the championship drive against Douglass made Jolly a Macon celebrity, but things changed when he graduated. The quarterback, going from state superstar to freshman newcomer, did not get as much playing time in his first year at Georgia Tech and didn’t get along with the coaching staff there.

“I think that was my biggest mistake, was leaving Georgia Tech. I was so used to winning and playing… that I didn’t know what it was, what I had,” Jolly said. “I mean, I had one friend show me I was in Sports Illustrated that year, I think… I said, ‘What? I’m not winning!’ I had no idea.”

Jolly did have one key game for the Yellow Jackets — a comeback to force a tie against Clemson, according to Telegraph archives — but transferred out to Tennessee State after his freshman year did not go as planned.

From there, he sputtered out, as athletes sometimes do. He moved back to Macon for a while, then went to Atlanta and did a variety of jobs — he worked as a data processor for the pharmaceutical company SmithKline Beecham, had a gig at a distribution center for Stone and Webster engineering, even drove around delivering furniture.

It was not the pathway to NFL stardom that some Maconites, including Jolly himself, envisioned for the Big Orange hero.

“A lot of people say that, ‘well, if I could do it all over again, I wouldn’t change a thing,’ or whatever. I can honestly say that I probably would change some things,” Jolly said. “I really can’t complain, though… I’ve been fortunate to have what I have.”

Jolly lives up near Atlanta now, though he still visits Macon sometimes. He gets a few looks when he does.

“I think up ‘til I was 50, people would still ask me if I was playing in the NFL,” he said with a chuckle. “I’m like, man, look at me. Are you serious?”

Jolly actually did not keep up with Georgia’s high school football scene after he stopped playing. He first heard about the Northeast Raiders’ impressive season just before the playoffs began when a former teammate — Macon legend Roger Jackson, a defensive back who played for the Denver Broncos for a few seasons in the 1980s — mentioned it to him.

“When Roger said they might have a chance, I said okay! They might be serious then,” Jolly said.

The former Central star kept his eye on Northeast — the team he and his teammates used to deride as the “River Rats” back in the day — from that point on. He watched their championship effort, admiring it despite the 38-18 loss.

There’s lots of talk of a dynasty blooming for the Raiders, a football feat Macon hasn’t seen since the days when Jolly and Brodie brought the Chargers to a title.

“I think they do have a chance to do that, but they have to do it right. Back when we made it so far in the playoffs those times, we needed the experience,” Jolly said after Northeast’s loss. “As a freshman when we lost the championship, it didn’t hit the same. You need to go more than one time.

“Back then, we had good coaching, we had a strong booster club and support. It was a machine. We had a team mindset of ‘You kill a gnat with a sledgehammer.’ If they can have that, they could build this thing up.”

But for now, Jolly and the Big Orange reign supreme as the last Macon team to win a GHSA title.

Is the quarterback happy about it? Sure.

“But nearly 50 years?,” Jolly says with what seems like mild disbelief. “That’s long enough for us to hold it. If we still have it, so be it. But they should go and get it and put that spotlight on Macon.”