Is Alabama-Georgia a rivalry? Not really, but the SEC powers share a weird history

Is Alabama-Georgia a rivalry? Not really, but the SEC powers share a weird history

The big, iconic hedges that surround its home field are a defining part of the Georgia football program. And as legend has it, Georgia can thank the kindness of the program that now serves as its nemesis: Alabama.

The story goes that Charlie Morton, who worked in Georgia’s athletic department in 1926, was invited by his Alabama counterpart to that year’s Rose Bowl to watch the Crimson Tide play on the West Coast. Martin came away so impressed with the rose hedges that when Georgia began building Sanford Stadium a few years later, Martin wanted some to be a part of the Bulldogs’ new home.

“But roses won’t grow well in this climate, so that’s when they switched to the (regular) hedges,” said Loran Smith, the official historian of the Georgia athletic department.

So that’s the legend, and nobody has challenged it over the last century. A century in which Alabama and Georgia have been two of the most prominent programs in college football, their showdowns over the last decade-plus becoming must-see television. And yet this matchup of two flagship schools in bordering states is not played every year. In fact, few in either fan base would consider the other one of their school’s top two or three rivals.

Or as Kirk McNair, a longtime Alabama writer and historian, puts it: “It’s a rivalry when it’s important.”

That has been the case in recent years and will be once again when they meet Sept. 27 in Athens. In nine of the last 10 meetings, dating back to 2008, both teams have been ranked in the AP top 10, and seven of those 10 times they’ve both been ranked in the top five. That includes two national championship games and four SEC championship games.

The series took on new meaning after Kirby Smart, who had been Alabama’s defensive coordinator from 2007 to 2015, became Georgia’s head coach, colliding with his mentor Nick Saban in many of those games. But even before that, the two teams played their share of classics, from the brutal (for Georgia) ending of the 2012 SEC championship, the infamous (again, for Georgia) Blackout game of 2008 and a number of memorable finishes between Bear Bryant and Vince Dooley’s teams.

 

So why has it not been an annual game? Some of it has to do with an infamous case that went all the way to the Supreme Court. Some of it is just simple geography.

 

Alabama and Georgia are border states, but the campuses in Tuscaloosa and Athens are more than 275 miles apart. One must drive through Atlanta and Birmingham, two major Southern cities, to get from one to the other. That was a hindrance to establishing a rivalry in the early days of college football. Auburn’s campus, for example, is a few hours’ drive closer to each. Georgia also has an in-state rivalry with Georgia Tech. Alabama and Georgia also developed heated rivalries with other border state schools: Tennessee (for Alabama) and Florida (for Georgia).

 

Their first meeting was in 1895 in Columbus, Ga., won by Georgia, 30-6. They met again in 1901, starting a 64-year stretch that featured 47 meetings. In those days, the SEC didn’t make the conference schedule, so schools decided who they played within the conference. So while Alabama-Georgia was not an annual rivalry, the ties between the programs — and geography — were close enough to make it a frequently played game

Bryant got his revenge in 1972, despite Georgia fans pulling the fire alarm at Alabama’s hotel in Athens and riding by it constantly, blaring horns. Dooley did beat Bryant four years later in Athens.

 

But the teams didn’t play from 1978 through 1983, meaning Alabama didn’t match up with Dooley’s best teams, including the 1980 national champion. They played eight times from 1984 through 2003, periods in which the two programs weren’t often both good. Only once in that period were both ranked when they played: 2002, when No. 7 Georgia won at No. 22 Alabama, 27-25.

 

Everything changed when Saban arrived.

 

At first, Georgia got the upper hand. Mark Richt’s 22nd-ranked Bulldogs won in Tuscaloosa, 26-23 in overtime. The next year, Saban started his seven-game win streak, almost all memorable games. Smart, who was born in Montgomery, Ala., finally ended the streak in the 2022 national championship game. But he has lost the last two, including last year’s 41-34 game in Tuscaloosa, the first after Saban retired.

 

This year, Smart gets to face Alabama in Athens for the first time. Going forward, the two will play twice every four years. In the new SEC scheduling format, if the conference stays at eight games, every team will have one designated annual rival. Alabama gets Auburn, and Georgia gets Florida. If they go to nine games, then every team gets three designated annual rivals, but Alabama-Georgia is not expected to be one of them.