Local

UGA grad battling cancer wages ESPN campaign

ATLANTA — A Cobb County man is working to get a family member who is battling cancer on college football’s biggest stage.

Joe Pettit started the Twitter campaign #TravonGameDay in an effort to get his brother-in-law on College GameDay when ESPN’s signature college football show travels to Athens for this weekend’s game.

Travis Roberts, a UGA grad, is battling a rare cancer known as cholangiocarcinoma.

"My liver kind of looked like a pepperoni pizza," Roberts told Channel 2's Jeff Dore.

"The last couple days have been hard. The last couple days have brought bad news and then worse news. His chemotherapy is failing, and the cancer is growing," Joe wrote on a blog.

"The whole family was sitting in his bedroom crying. It was terrible. So heartbreaking," Pettite told Dore.

Roberts said chemo is ineffective and the cancer is regrowing so he turned his focus to Saturday's Bulldogs game.

"I said, 'GameDay's in town. They could do one of their sob stories,'" Pettite said.

That's when the Twitter campaign started.

Pettit is the chairman of the Cobb County Young Republicans and his cause has grabbed the attention of state leaders on Twitter including Gov. Nathan Deal and Congressman Phil Gingrey.

http://twitter.com/GovernorDeal/status/383340824949297152

Eventually their cause reached GameDay and the crew invited them all to Athens to meet the stars of the show.

"They got passes for me to come up after the show so it's pretty neat," Roberts said.

Roberts will get a behind-the-scenes tour on Saturday and then head to Texas in the near future to try out a brand new chemotherapy drug.