Georgia and Clemson, both ranked in the Top 5 and considered national championship contenders, meet Saturday in Charlotte.
We won’t know until after it is played whether that game, part of this year’s Duke’s Mayo Classic, will live up to expectations and end up ranking as the Dawgs’ greatest season opener ever.
What we safely can say at this point is that it’s easily the Dawgs’ most hyped opener in at least 39 years, dating back to 1982, when college football’s two previous national champions, Georgia (1980) and Clemson (1981), met Between the Hedges in a nationally televised game billed as the Battle of the Champions.
This was back when the two schools still met annually in football. That year’s game, the first regular-season college matchup on Labor Day night, originally was scheduled to be played Sept. 18, 1982, but ABC reportedly paid Georgia and Clemson $125,000 each to move it to the holiday Monday night in the 9 p.m. prime-time slot usually reserved for the NFL’s “Monday Night Football.”
We had just returned from a three-week visit to family in the U.K. the day before, but this was back during the era when Georgia-Clemson was the Dawgs’ biggest rivalry (topping even Florida in Jacksonville), so I made the drive over to Athens from Decatur, despite being jet-lagged.
The pregame hype for the showdown between the Dawgs (ranked No. 7 nationally) and the Tigers (ranked No. 9 in one poll, No. 11 in the other) was heightened by speculation over whether Georgia’s celebrated tailback, Herschel Walker, would be able to play. (He had broken his thumb in UGA’s first preseason scrimmage in August.)
In the end, though, the game didn’t live up to the hype, as its 13-7 final score indicates. It was mostly a defensive struggle, with Clemson QB Homer Jordan, a native of Athens, intercepted four times.
The most exciting offensive moment came when Walker, wearing a cast on the injured hand, was inserted into the game in the second quarter as a decoy, drawing most of the Clemson defense toward him, and allowing Tron Jackson to score on a 41-yard reverse — only to have the touchdown wiped out by a penalty. Otherwise, Walker was pretty much a nonfactor in the game, carrying the ball 11 times for only 20 yards (including one 10-yard run), against a stiff Clemson defense led by a pair of All-America players, middle guard William “Refrigerator” Perry and safety Terry Kinard. The Dawgs won the game on the basis of two field goals kicked by Kevin Butler.
(That was Clemson’s only 1982 loss, with a tie the next week against Boston College being the other stain on their record. The Dawgs went undefeated and played for another national championship, losing 27-23 to Penn State in the Sugar Bowl.)
Since Georgia and Clemson used to open against each other frequently, the series between the Dawgs and Tigers has produced quite a few other notable first games, some of which were more enjoyable than the 1982 showdown.
One of the best of them was in 2014 in Athens, the most recent meeting between the two schools.
The 12th-ranked Dawgs set the college football world abuzz with a 45-21 win over the No. 16 Tigers, thanks to an amazing performance by Todd Gurley (who scored four touchdowns and had a school-record 293 all-purpose yards). Nick Chubb also made an impressive debut as a freshman.
Clemson actually led 21-14, before Georgia tied it up on a 100-yard kickoff return by Gurley. Then, the Dawgs took command of the game in the second half and shut the Tigers down (even after Clemson pulled its starter, Cole Stoudt, and gave future star DeShaun Watson his first playing time at quarterback).
The rest of the Dawgs’ 2014 season didn’t live up to that game, but it was an impressive performance, nonetheless.
Another great Georgia-Clemson opener was UGA’s 31-28 win in Athens in 2002.
The Dawgs, led by quarterback David Greene, won a lot of squeakers that season, starting with the Clemson game, which included a Fred Gibson 91-yard kickoff return for a touchdown. UGA led 21-14 at the half, but Clemson led 28-21 at the start of the fourth quarter, and defensive star David Pollack was in the locker room cramping.
A pass from backup QB D.J. Shockley to Terrence Edwards got the score tied up, and then Georgia took back the lead with a Billy Bennett field goal with 5:19 remaining. Clemson missed a 46-yard field goal attempt with 1:43 left but was hoping to get another shot when Georgia faced fourth-and-1 at its own 38. Mark Richt went for it, sending tailback Musa Smith over the top, and the Dawgs got their needed first down with just seconds left on the clock.
It wasn’t nearly as exciting, but many Georgia fans also loved the next year’s game, at Clemson, won 30-0 by the Dawgs, who came into the 2003 game shorthanded due to two defensive starters being injured and eight other players being suspended. Despite that, the defense came up big, and four Bulldogs — including backup quarterback Shockley — ran for more yards than the Tigers did as a team. (Now a TV sports anchor, Shockley also will become UGA’s radio sideline reporter at games this season.)
Of course, Georgia has had memorable opening games against high-profile opponents other than Clemson (though Dawgs fans also have had to endure way too many yawn-inducing season openers against cupcake opponents). Through the years, I’ve seen visits to Athens by the likes of UCLA (with Rick Neuheisel at QB), Oregon, Oregon State, California, Boise State, Oklahoma State and Baylor.
Plus, there’ve been openers against SEC opponents that have produced some great UGA wins, including the 1965 shocking 18-17 “flea-flicker” upset of national champion Alabama at Sanford Stadium, the 16-15 win over Tennessee in Knoxville that kicked off the 1980 national championship season, and the 42-23 pounding of South Carolina in Athens in 1995, marking the debut of former cornerback Robert Edwards at tailback (he scored 5 times). Plus, I have very fond memories of the 1971 domination of Oregon State that turned into the Buzy Rosenberg show, which I wrote about last week.
More recently, in 2016, Georgia opened the season beating North Carolina, 33-24, in the battle for the leather helmet at the Chick-fil-A Kickoff Game in Atlanta. That one marked Smart’s first game as Georgia’s head coach and saw freshman Jacob Eason supplant Greyson Lambert at quarterback by the game’s end.
Naturally, there also have been tough openers the Bulldogs haven’t won, including the debacle in the Power Rangers uniforms against Boise State in the Georgia Dome in 2011, the 2009 team’s flop opener on the road against Oklahoma State, and a couple of mid-1970s openers against Tony Dorsett-era Pittsburgh that resulted in a tie and a loss.
Perhaps the most frustrating opener for Georgia was the nationally televised 1968 game against the Vols in Knoxville. You might think UGA would have been pleased with the 17-17 tie, since they’d been a touchdown underdog to the previous season’s No. 2 team, but, on the last play of regulation time, the officials awarded Tennessee a touchdown catch, despite the fact that video replays clearly showed that the ball bounced off the infamous artificial Tartan Turf and into the receiver’s hands.
I know Georgia fans who still get irate at the mention of that one.
Back to this year’s opener: The Dawgs may lead the series 42-18-4, but, under Dabo Sweeney, Clemson has rivaled Alabama as a national power in recent years. Meanwhile, Smart looks to have his best team since 2017, a highly rated quarterback in JT Daniels, and what appears to be (on paper, at least) a very manageable schedule the rest of the way after the opener.
“This game is going to be a monster,” former UGA head coach Richt told the Athens Banner-Herald this past week. “It may be the very best game of the year if you talk about the regular season …”
If the game lives up to its hype, a win likely will give either team a prime spot in national championship conversations.
On the other hand, the general consensus among college football analysts is that a loss in this opener shouldn’t derail either team’s College Football Playoff hopes (though Georgia ultimately has the tougher road, playing in the SEC).
And, while an SEC championship would make the Dawgs a playoff certainty, many commentators think even a 12-2 Georgia team, with losses to just Clemson and (probably) Alabama (in the SEC title game), still might merit playoff consideration, depending on how the nonchampions in the Big 10 and Big 12 fare.
So, there’s no question the Clemson game will be one of Georgia’s biggest openers ever, if not the biggest. We’ll have to wait to find out whether it’s also one of the best.
About that annual season prediction …
I usually go out on a limb the week before a new season kicks off, offering my somewhat-educated guess as to how the Dawgs will do in the coming season.
Sometimes, my crystal ball is pretty accurate; oftentimes, it’s not.
This year, though, I feel that I need to hedge my prediction with a major asterisk, having to do with how Georgia’s injury situation goes, and how Smart and his staff manage whatever personnel losses they might encounter down the road.
If everyone on the team were in tip-top shape for the Clemson game, I’d feel pretty good about the Dawgs’ chances against the mighty Tigers. As it is, we’re not sure at this point whether several key players will be able to participate, or, if they do, how effective they will be. Beating Clemson when not at full-strength would be an awfully tall order.
Beyond the game in Charlotte, I feel really good about Georgia’ chances the rest of the way through the regular season. As it stands now, they’ll be favored in every game.
Yes, there’s always the chance that the Dawgs might slip up and lose to a lesser team, but I’d say it’s less likely this year than in recent seasons, because Georgia should have a much more explosive offense, and the question marks (offensive line, secondary) don’t look as serious as in some past years.
As usual, the SEC East’s representative in the conference championship game should be decided in Jacksonville, and, despite the trash talking we continue to hear out of the Gators’ sneering coach, I think Georgia is a solid favorite there.
As for getting past the SEC West winner in Atlanta, if it’s not Alabama, I imagine Georgia will be the favorite in that game, too.
If it is the Crimson Tide (as most expect), Smart and his staff are going to have to prove they finally can harpoon Moby Nick. Maybe the time is nigh. After all, this season, Bama at least has to reload, having lost quite a bit of talent from last year’s national championship team.
So, my prediction? I’d love to be able to say 12-0, but, with the way the preseason has gone, that’s a bridge too far for me. So, I’m going to say that, if the key players all get and stay healthy (there’s the asterisk!), the Dawgs should win the SEC East, with a regular-season record of at least 11-1.
And, that’s as far out on that limb as I’m willing to go at this time.
