Alabama-Georgia is the best college football rivalry because it's all about being elite
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Most rivalries in college football are sibling rivalries born out of proximity. A good number date back a century or so and have evolved alongside the sport: through the poll era, integration, expansion and the transformative changes that have occurred in the past five years. Others have been erased amid conference realignment.
But with few exceptions — or maybe even without exception — these rivalries are fueled by contempt.
Alabama and Georgia are different. The No. 2 Bulldogs and No. 7 Crimson Tide are set to meet on Saturday in the latest iteration of a series defined by shared space and shared expectations, but not necessarily by animosity. The sense of mutual respect differentiates this series from others inside and out of the SEC.
“It is a rivalry, a big rivalry, because damn, Alabama’s so good, you beat them you really accomplish something,” said Loran Smith, a longtime Georgia athletics department employee and sideline reporter for the Bulldogs’ radio broadcast.
These are two of the three dominant programs of this century, along with Ohio State. Since 2008, the Bulldogs and Tide have met in a sequence of high-impact games that have influenced the SEC championship, the race for the national championship and the title of college football’s most dominant program.
And while most rivalries have one foot in the past, that there is so much on the line in every meeting between Alabama and Georgia leaves the series existing almost exclusively in the present moment.
“I mean, I see every game in the conference as a big game,” said Georgia coach Kirby Smart. “This one has a more storied history, especially recent history because of the matchups and because of the two divisions where they ended up being pitted against each other and the meaningful games that we’ve played against them in the recent, I don’t know, 10-, 15-year history.”
The reborn rivalry between Alabama and Georgia
There is one thread of disdain in this series.
In 1963, the Saturday Evening Post ran an exposé claiming that former Georgia coach Wally Butts had shared team secrets with Alabama coach Bear Bryant before the Crimson Tide’s 35-0 win the previous September.
In response, Butts and Bryant sued the publication for libel and won, with both earning six-figure settlements.
In the wake of the scandal, Alabama and Georgia decided to end what had been an annual series. The two would meet just seven times from 1966-90, with Alabama winning four.
“It’s had some unusual twists,” Smith said of the series. “All of that was just a total embarrassment. Lost a lot of energy, wasted a lot of time. Just a lot of things that should not have gone on.”
But the rivalry wasn’t reignited when the SEC expanded in 1991 and established two divisions and a conference championship game. Georgia and Alabama rarely occupied the same space through the 1990s and first half of the 2000s — the Bulldogs were down when the Tide won the 1993 national championship under Gene Stallings, and vice versa after the Bulldogs began to surge under former coach Mark Richt.
Things changed when Alabama hired Nick Saban in 2007. Since the following year, this series has defined college football in a way that is unmatched by any other series in modern history.
“There’s, I think, probably more familiarity, and that’s us with them, and them with us, too,” said Alabama coach Kalen DeBoer.
Why there’s no rivalry like Alabama and Georgia
This is the 13th meeting between the two teams since 2008, and every matchup has directly or indirectly determined the national champion.
Included are two of the three instances of two teams from the same conference playing in the national championship game.
Five have come in the SEC championship game, beginning with a meeting in 2012 that ranks among the most memorable in conference history:
- 2012: No. 2 Alabama 32, No. 3 Georgia 28
- 2018: No. 1 Alabama 35, No. 4 Georgia 28
- 2021: No. 2 Alabama 41, No. 1 Georgia 24
- 2023: No. 8 Alabama 27, No. 1 Georgia 24
- 2025: No. 3 Georgia 28, No. 10 Alabama 7
There have been another five regular-season games with both teams ranked in the US LBM Coaches Poll, with Georgia inside the top six in every matchup. For the Tide, the 2008 win was the spark that ignited the Saban-era dynasty:
- 2008: No. 10 Alabama 41, No. 3 Georgia 30
- 2015: No. 13 Alabama 38, No. 6 Georgia 10
- 2020: No. 2 Alabama 41, No. 3 Georgia 24
- 2024: No. 4 Alabama 41, No. 1 Georgia 34
- 2025: No. 16 Alabama 24, No. 3 Georgia 21
And then there are the two meetings that have come in the national championship game under the College Football Playoff format:
- Jan. 8, 2018: No. 4 Alabama 26, No. 3 Georgia 23
- Jan. 10, 2022: No. 3 Georgia 33, No. 1 Alabama 18
The Crimson Tide have dominated the recent series, first under Saban and now under DeBoer, who has taken two of three since being hired in 2024.
But Georgia has been the better program this decade. Alabama is 56-14 since winning the 2020 championship and 25-8 in DeBoer’s two-plus seasons. This is rarefied air in the Power but not up to the standard set by the Bulldogs, who are 70-8 over the same span with two national titles and four SEC crowns, including the past two in a row.
Both teams know what they’re getting into on Saturday night: a season-defining matchup where familiarity has bred respect, not contempt.
“It’s gonna be a hard game, a hard-nosed game,” said Alabama cornerback Zabien Brown. “We know them, they know us. It’s gonna be a battle of grit, a battle of consistency.”
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Alabama-Georgia is the best college football rivalry because it's all about being elite
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