The hardest challenge for football coaches is for their teams not to look ahead when preparing for games.  Win a big game and you want the focus not to be about the past but preparation for the next opponent.

Any seasoned observer becomes aware that the Bulldog coaching staff Sunday morning following victory over Tennessee was to get over the celebration of overtime glory in Knoxville and face the reality that Alabama is a football team befitting its image built by Nick Saban.  Bama still has talent.  

They may not have the overall edge that those latent Saban teams have had, but they will be ready for the Bulldogs Saturday night. You know the internal preachments in Tuscaloosa this week have been the constant reminder that the Tide’s success against Georgia can continue.

The two schools first met in Columbus in 1895, with Alabama holding a 44-26 lead in the series.  There have been four ties.   Streaks tend to be cyclical.  Why did Bobby Bowden have such difficulty beating Miami when he seemed to be so fortunate against most everybody else.

Although Michigan has a four-game winning streak over Ohio State, the Wolverines went through a 25-year period in which they only won seven games against their main rival.  Virginia played Clemson for 29 years before winning its first game against the Tigers.

In its long history against the Crimson Tide, Georgia has won some exciting games in the series but has also lost some heartbreakers.  In several recent games, Alabama has seemed to have been the beneficiary of a lot of breaks, especially with officiating mistakes.

However, you will never hear Kirby Smart say anything about that.  You never gain anything when you do, and I always remember a situation with Florida State when the Seminoles, coached by Bill Peterson, scored a touchdown on Florida in 1966 with 17 seconds left in the game. The official ruled that the pass receiver was out of bounds and called the pass incomplete.

It is still a topic of derision in Tallahassee today.  Peterson even had still photos printed in which he had the photographer paint a white line where the sideline was to prove the pass receiver was in bounds.  The final score: Florida, 22; FSU, 19. That was the score after the game, and that is the score in the record book today.

Nothing like being a Red Sox fan, losing constantly to the Yankees, and not winning the World Series for 86 years.

In the overtime game of Kirby Smart’s third season that decided the national championship, Big Ten officials later admitted that they made mistakes that cost Georgia the game.  In a book manuscript, I once wrote that Alabama brought its A game, Georgia brought its A+ game and if the officials had brought a C game, the Bulldogs would have won.   Kirby marked through that passage, and while he was right, such circumstances do reflect that one-sided trends sometimes come about in sports.

Defeating Alabama in Indianapolis for Kirby’s first national title will always be, perhaps, Georgia’s most significant victory in the series, but for pure emotional pleasure, I will always consider the flea-flicker victory in Sanford Stadium in1965 especial.

Georgia gets out front when the late George Patton snatched a fluttering pass (Bama’s State Sloan was hit just as he threw) and raced 55 yards for a touchdown.  The Bulldogs added a field goal, but Alabama came back to take a 17-10 lead late in the fourth quarter.  That is when Vince Dooley sent in a messenger who told quarterback Kirby Moore “to run the flea flicker,” a play that had not worked in practice.

Moore was astonished but made the call and threw a low pass to a button-hooking Pat Hodgson, who fell to his knees as he shoveled the ball to a trailing Bob Taylor, who raced 73 yards for a touchdown, which was followed by a two-point conversion from Moore to Hodgson and a classic upset, 18-17.  

This was the first time network television had ever covered a game in Sanford Stadium.  NBC sent Jim Simpson (play-by-play) and Bud Wilkinson (color analyst) to Athens for the game.

I had taken Wilkinson, the former Oklahoma coach, down to the field where he was instructed by the producer to interview the winning coach.  He was on the Georgia sideline when the flea flicker took place.  Vince Dooley called a timeout to huddle with his offensive coaches.  There was no hesitation; Georgia would “go for two.” 

Vince and the coaches decided on the play, and after breaking the informal huddle, he walked over to where Wilkinson was standing and said softly, “We are going for two.”   Wilkinson, caught up in the excitement, gushed enthusiastically, “We’ve got to.”

This is what college football is all about.  The tradition continues, big game mania continues, and the game this weekend between Georgia and Alabama should again be a classic contest as so many have been in the past.