UGA sports super fan who carried on a family tradition of painting his bald head dies at 46

An Athens man known as a University of Georgia sports super fan and by the nickname “Big Dawg” died this week.

Trent Woods had kept alive a beloved tradition of painting his bald head with the face of a University of Georgia Bulldog. It's a tradition that began with his grandfather four decades earlier. The Woods became a familiar and sought after sight at UGA football games.

Woods' family reported to various media outlets that he died of undisclosed natural causes on Monday at the age of 46.

The head-painting tradition began in 1980, when Woods' grandfather Lonnie Lee Woods Sr. painted a bulldog on his head after UGA won the national championship in football that year, according to a story in the Athens Banner-Herald.

Woods died in 1987 and his son, Mike “Big Dawg” Woods, continued the tradition. Mike Woods died of a heart condition in 2017 at the age of 65.

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“My whole family bleeds red and black,” Mike Woods told the Banner-Herald in a 2013 interview.

After his father’s death, Trent Woods continued the tradition.

And like his predecessors, he posed for pictures with fans at sporting events and it was not uncommon to see his image pop on the screen during televised games.

Funeral plans had not been announced as of Wednesday.

This article originally appeared on Athens Banner-Herald: Trent 'Big Dawg' Woods, the super fan, has died at 46, known for painting head