When I think about college football's best rivalries, I think about an Iron Bowl anecdote former Auburn beat writer Bennett Durando unearthed several years ago.
The story goes like this:
In the run-up to Terry Bowden’s first Iron Bowl as Auburn’s coach in 1993, Bowden flipped on the local news the night before the game. The news aired a preview package that included a reporter interviewing an Auburn fan who’d already started tailgating outside Jordan-Hare Stadium, a day before kickoff.
“Is this game life and death?” the reporter asked the Auburn fan.
“No, no, no,” the fan said. “It’s much bigger than that.”
Much bigger than life and death. That’s how that Auburn fan viewed the Iron Bowl.
Now, that’s a rivalry.
Manning is miles away from their ballot
Bowden, according to Durando’s reporting, chuckled at the fan’s quote, but the news segment hit home and removed any doubt about the rivalry’s significance.
“I realized I was 10-0 (before the 1993 Iron Bowl) and had saved my career,” Bowden told the Montgomery Advertiser, as he recalled that television report, “but I hadn’t saved my job yet.”
What’s it take to be an elite college football rivalry? History helps. So does proximity of the two schools. If the schools are located within the same state, even better.
But, the jet fuel that accelerates a game from being a good matchup to a great rivalry is a shared feeling among fans the game is “much bigger” than life and death.
If the two sides hate one another, hate each other enough that a fan is willing to go to jail just to torment the other side, then you’ve really got something brewing.
That’s why — and, I take no pleasure in being a downer on this — Alabama-Georgia is not a rivalry.
It’s a great matchup, one that’s delivered some fantastic games since the teams started meeting more regularly about a decade ago, but it’s not the Iron Bowl. It’s not even Alabama-Tennessee or Alabama-LSU.
Alabama and Georgia don’t hate each other. They respect one another.
“It’s gonna be a hard game, a hard-nosed game,” Alabama cornerback Zabien Brown told reporters this week. “We know them, they know us. It’s gonna be a battle of grit, a battle of consistency.”
A battle of grit, not a flare-up of hatred.
Georgia’s rivalry with Georgia Tech is literally known as “Clean, Old-Fashioned Hate,” and its rivalry with Auburn is the Deep South’s Oldest Rivalry.
So, Alabama-Georgia still has some catching up to do, I’m afraid.
Rivalry or just a good game? Kirby Smart sees a rivalry
As recently as 1995-2001, these programs went six consecutive years without facing one another. The introduction of the College Football Playoff and later the elimination of SEC divisions allowed these programs to play more regularly.
Starting with Alabama's overtime win in the national championship game in January 2018, these teams have met nine times. Alabama is 7-2 in those games, but Kirby Smart's first national championship triumph came against Alabama, and Georgia also won last year's SEC Championship.
Smart sees a rivalry forming.
“When you have two good programs that end up meeting up a lot of times in meaningful games, it creates a rivalry,” Georgia’s coach told reporters before the season.
Maybe, a rivalry was indeed bubbling up when it was protégé versus mentor with Smart going against Nick Saban. But, Saban's retirement removed a pivotal personality from this series, and now this just feels more like a great matchup between SEC heavies and less like a heated rivalry.
No Alabama fan with the surname Updyke is going to poison Georgia’ hedges and brag about it to Paul Finebaum. (At least, I don’t think that’s going to happen, but I should know better than to underestimate the intensity of SEC fans.)
This game is not like the 2013 Iron Bowl, after which one Alabama fan became so outraged about the stunning “Kick-Six” loss to Auburn that she “went crazy,” according to one witness, and shot and killed another fan because the victim wasn’t angrier about the loss.
Seriously, that’s not a joke. The Iron Bowl sends fans to prison.
Alabama-Georgia will send the winner up the polls, and the loser should remain a top-10 team. The teams could meet again in the SEC Championship or in the playoff.
Nick Saban would add more fuel to Alabama-Georgia
New rivalries can and do emerge, even without the bedrock of history. Florida and Tennessee flared up as a defining rivalry of the ‘90s and early 2000s. That game had a couple of factors working in its favor. Those teams each played in the SEC East, meaning only one could go to the SEC Championship. Florida-Tennessee would chart the course for the SEC East. Now, divisions are gone, and Alabama and Georgia could play a rematch in Atlanta, even before the playoff.
Also, Florida-Tennessee greatly benefited from a strong central character, Steve Spurrier, who evoked strong emotions from the rival side. Spurrier grew up in East Tennessee and rooted for the Vols until he attended Florida, where he won the Heisman. Then, as Florida’s coach, Spurrier used his quips and game-day savvy to torment the Vols and get under the skin of Tennessee coach Phillip Fulmer.
Alabama-Georgia featured two strong personalities when it was Saban versus Smart.
Now, Saban’s role is relegated to “College GameDay,” and even though Alabama is 2-1 against Georgia under Kalen DeBoer, Saban’s unassuming heir is not the type of personality to stir up strong emotions in enemy territory.
Heck, this Alabama-Georgia series doesn’t even have a name.
It’s not the Iron Bowl, or the Egg Bowl, or the Magnolia Bowl, or the Third Saturday in October, or the Cocktail Party, or Red River. It’s just Alabama-Georgia. Call it a heck of a matchup, but it’s not life and death.
Blake Toppmeyer is the USA TODAY Network's senior national college football columnist. Listen to his podcast, "College Football Unfiltered." Email him at BToppmeyer@gannett.com and follow him on X @btoppmeyer.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Alabama-Georgia don't hate each other enough to call this a rivalry | Opinion
