Han Vance on Georgia football: It is crucial to the immediate success of any sporting program that the players and coaches not get caught looking too far ahead. This dictum does not hold true for the writers and fans following the team, however, of which I am both. Tennessee at Georgia has been slotted for 3:30 on CBS on the final Saturday in September.
The 3:30 CBS game is the biggest game from the best conference in the nation, as they will tell you. Georgia whipped South Carolina in a Columbia, S.C., 3:30 game for the only big win of the season-to-date. That game sandwiched between two easy cupcakes in the Classic City, the Georgia-Tennessee contest will be the first big Georgia home game.
None of the traditional three rivals (Tech, Florida, Auburn) hosts Georgia this season, so Athens and Jacksonville, where tickets are divided 50-50, are the keys to continued rivalry supremacy. This week, (3-0) Missouri battles Georgia for first in the SEC East but has never beaten UGA in Co-Mo (the other Columbia) and only taken the Dawgs out once.
Since the Prayer at Jordan-Hare saw Auburn have a rare win over Georgia, that in the second consecutive meeting in the Deep South’s Oldest Rivalry to be played in the state of Alabama, the series has been shifted into a scheduling rotation that has all of the three key non-neutral site rivals, home-or-away, in the same year. Here giving the nod to UT as our clear fourth biggest rival. This newer scheduling is bad for the fans. While Georgia-Florida happens at the edge of the Sunshine State every year, getting Tech, Tennessee and Auburn in Athens in the same seasons leaves much less to look forward to in the following seasons in terms of rivalries. South Carolina is no such real rival, not unless they are winning some of the games in the series. They are 0-3 versus Kirby Smart and have lost four straight to the Bulldogs, winning the SEC East once ever. Even Mizzou has won it twice, in their first two tries.
An unusual trend has been evolving in the SEC East, of programs winning the division in back-to-back years. It was Georgia twice, Missouri twice, Florida twice. This bodes well for the Dawgs, who are heavily favored to repeat as divisional champions, with no other East team even ranked and Georgia #2 in one poll and #3 in another. Is there anybody out there?
Of those schools, only Georgia, who flipped the script back to the Peach State, won the SEC, with the eventual breakthrough in year 2 of the Kirby era. Mark Richt won the whole SEC in 2002 and 2005, only. Kirby can catch him with just one more league title and pass him with two more. Vince Dooley never went more than six years without winning the SEC.
Georgia has the 2nd-most SEC crowns, now, in a tie with Tennessee at twelve, both way below the Crimson Tide, who won their 17th national championship last season in Atlanta in dramatic fashion. It should be noted that many of the Tide’s titles were far from unanimous and their regular inclusion in the top tiers of various postseasons without league titles is far beyond irregular. Qualification should not be a popularity contest. (It is.)
In the 1990s, the Vols first became a real rival of UGA as both sides were looking up at a juggernaut in Gainesville, Florida. Neither had much success at all with Steve Spurrier and his Gators, who handily ruled the division and often the conference with a pass-happy attack. Spurrier only won one national title, though.
Current UT A.D. Phil Fulmer, whose Vols were often second in the SEC East to Florida, with Georgia only strong enough for third in the division, eventually won one national title, the year after Peyton Manning left UT. Over eleven seasons, and through the introduction of SEC divisional play, his Tennessee teams went 9-0 against Georgia over eleven years, winning in almost every conceivable fashion. I was there. I hate UT.
So I’m keyed up for this game already. Who else may be looking ahead is UT head coach Jeremy Pruitt. He won the national championship as a defensive coordinator last year, and he was a very strong coordinator in Athens. He turned around a porous Georgia defense and put them near the top of the national rankings. This could be his statement game. (It won’t.)
On their last trip to Athens, the Vols beat Ol’ Georgia on a Hail Mary that was so memorably heartbreaking to me and mine that we still talk about it regularly. Tennessee holds a 23-22-2 series advantage over UGA and has won 2-of-3, losing 41-0 at Rocky Top last season to the eventual league champs. I will be in Athens on Sep. 29 with Richard Hilley, a 5th-generation Georgia Man, and his mother who I’m meeting for the first time.
All team focus on an explosive Mizzou as Georgia heads to the heartland, I’m able to look forward to being back in the Classic City in under two weeks.