Wednesday Wondering: What Makes a Rivalry?

Posted on by

Based on some of the comments in yesterday’s post on the potential 2026 schedule, it seems we might deviate away from a a rival we’ve played for decades, and that I’d personally miss, in Tennessee.

Being that conference scheduling, along with seemingly everything in the sport, is no longer the same in college football, it appears that may be the new norm. A season without Auburn and Tennessee, potentially? Not sure how that sits with me.

Fellow blogger at the Bulldawg Report had a good blog post this past week, on what makes a rival:

The tldr summary goes like this:

So what does all of this mean? Well, simply put, Georgia’s traditional rivals are those three teams they have played the most. They are the three teams Georgia has the deepest tradition of playing against. Those three teams are:

  • Auburn
  • Florida
  • Georgia Tech

Georgia has consistently faced numerous rivals throughout its history. However, when it comes to distinguishing which ones are bigger than the others I believe you can’t go wrong with the ones with the most history. If all else fails just look at the ones that were important enough to receive a name.

  • “Deep South’s Oldest Rivalry”
  • “The World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party”
  • “Clean Old-Fashioned Hate”

Per the blog, turns out we’ve played Alabama more times than Tennessee since 1933, yet my 1990s memories of Tennessee in Neyland has been so burned into my memory that I can’t imagine a Georgia football season without them. At the very least, it would seem that logic would prevail to continue playing Auburn in 2026, being the rivalry game that it is.

So today’s wondering…who is our biggest rivalry to you? Is Alabama and Tennessee a rival, or is that just impacted by recency bias?

31 thoughts on “Wednesday Wondering: What Makes a Rivalry?”

  1. according to relatives that are barners, bama was the secondary school of alabama until after ww2-ish.
    sorry bama-ers you don’t get to dictate your perceived rivals. guess what, we finally have our shit together as an overall organization and Kirby&co are going to deliver an epic beatdown of your historical, cheatin asses.
    also… tech hate today, tomorrow, and forever.

    • The only issue in favor of the bammers was the existence of satan, to beat your chest, UGA football had to defeat satan and it meant something of value, usually a trophy was at stake, some of the early fake juice UGA attempted vs satan ended up with a “L”, UGA vs the bammers isn’t restaurant quality, UGA football or any sporting event vs the prettiest little cesspool on the plains, FU or the north avenue fucking trade school is note worthy…GO DAWGS!!

  2. The team I want to beat the most is fla. The team I want to lose to the least is tech. The barn and hillbillies fall in between.
    The gumps are a rival on the recruiting trail..and maybe working their way to the field, but not quite yet for me.

  3. Between Tennessee and Alabama, it’s Tennessee all the day long (yes, that’s due to recency – we’ve played the Vols a whole lot more in the modern era due to divisions and expansion). With that, Tennessee still doesn’t deserve a mention along with the Big 3.

    Said differently, I’ll gladly give up playing Tennessee yearly to ensure the Deep South’s Oldest Rivalry gets contested every year.

  4. I’ve seen Alabama as a rival for conference preeminence and national relevance, period. They have been the kings of the SEC for most of my life. If you wanna be the man, you gotta beat the man. You wanna win natties you better be prepared to beat bama.

    Tenn. is a rival since divisional play. We’ll have to see how that goes.

    Auburn is the most important rival to beat and I do hate them more than any other. You aren’t winning SEC titles if you aren’t beating Auburn.

    You can’t lose to tech tho winning is no big deal. The white hot hatred of Florida fades more and more as SOS and Meyer are distant memories.

    • Yes to that except I swap Florida and Auburn. Growing up in Atlanta and while at Athens, Auburn was first in my heart for hatred. But after graduating and living in Jax for a while, the Gators quickly replaced them as number 1 with a bullet.

  5. To me Tennessee isn’t a rival. They’re a big game. It would define weird to not play them. Alabama isn’t a rival either. They’re obnoxious and all but I never cared about them all that much until 2008. SC thinks we are rivals but that’s all on their side of the table. There was a brief period when Spurrier was there that they mattered a little more but that was just about him and his mouth. The way I see it, everybody can’t be a rival so I fall back to the traditional rivalries.

  6. For me it is like what was mentioned above. I want to beat Florida the most and least want to lose to Tech (now I have a kid who will be a freshman there in the fall. Lord help me!). Then it is Auburn for me.

    When I was a kid Auburn seemed like more of a friendly rivalry until the hoses. Then Nick Fairly and Cam Newton arrived and it really turned for me with the only thing seemingly friendly about the rivalry is my best friend from childhood attended Auburn. Auburn has the most memories for me. My first road game was “Sugar Falling from the Sky.” Cory Allen spotting me in the Auburn student section in my red UGA hat from The Game and pointing as he ran to the end zone the year we tied, but ended Buster Brown’s win streak. At least I think Allen was pointing to me…lol. Freezing my ass off in the top of Jordan Hare until Greene hit Johnson in the end zone for the comeback win on the Plains.

    Tennessee would come in fourth for me and then Bama. Actually, Clemson is ahead of Bama for me.

    • I was born 30 miles from what is now Jordan-Hare Stadium into an Auburn family. I was an Auburn fan growing up in Atlanta until I decided to go to UGA.

      For years and years, Sanford222view, it was a friendly rivalry and I generally pulled for Auburn to win when not playing UGA (unless an Auburn loss helped us) until the 2010 game. I hate Auburn now as a result of that game and the way the fans acted.

      • 2010 changed everything. Living less than an hour away from barn, I attending our games there regularly until 2010. It was always a good time with friends from both sides tailgating together. That shitshow, and the defense of it by their fanbase (which they still do today), just ruined it for me. Have not been back since. Hope we hang a million on them this year.

    • My oldest graduated from Tech. It is still easy to hate them. They are obnoxious whether they win or lose.

  7. For me it’s Auburn and Fla, but Tennessee is right there. What pisses me off with Tennessee is they pretty much owned our ass during the 80’s and 90’s. We went friggin 0-9 from 89 to 99, with the hillbillies getting most of Georgia’s top recruits.

  8. I enjoy the look on my Tek and Coot relatives faces when I tell them our big 3 rivals are the evil orange 3. Auburn, Florida and Tennessee. It reallly hurts their feelings that they don’t count as much….just what I am trying to do.

    • Personally, it’s Auburn. Having an aunt and uncle who were huge Bammer fans growing up in the 80’s helped me learn to hate the Barn from another perspective, especially after the Hoses. Most of my mom’s side of the family are Barners, while we have steadily brought more Dawgs into the fold over the decades.

      Institutionally, I would rank our many rivalries in this order of importance:

      1. Florida
      2. Auburn
      3. Tech (I would suggest that if the 8 OTs had gone their way, many commenters would have the Nerds much higher on this list. Every slide rule lovin’ mom’s basement dweller would have crawled forth…ugh, I shudder at the thought.)
      4. Clemson. It’s a shame we don’t play them more often, but the hate is always simmering underneath.
      5. Tennessee. The 90s were tough times for us.

      As for Bama, I tend to lean towards the recency bias theory that we just don’t have the history with them. They don’t see us as a rival, but if we can keep this up a few more years and break their hearts a few more times…

  10. If you’re asking what makes a rival, a history playing annually goes a long way. Ask a UGA grad at their graduation ceremony if they view Ole Miss or the Vols as a rival. In 1990 they would have said Ole Miss fast forward to 2000, 2010, or now, it is the Vols.

    At one time Bama was an annual game and both would have said yes. Bama and UGA weren’t chief rivals but they were rivals. The Vols were Bama’s biggest game for many years. Can you make arguments UGA and Bama are or are not rivals? Sure.

    It is a mix of many things, annual play, shared borders or same state, competition for acceptance of the same students, memorable games. Oklahoma and Oklahoma State is lopsided but Bedlam has produced some interesting games. Southern Cal and ND don’t share borders but they have history.

    I hate Bama and Texas the most but the primary rivals are the Gators, Auburn, and GT.

  12. In other news and changing rivals, Conference lines are possibly shifting. Texas State looks to be leaving the Sun Belt for the PAC, and the Sun Belt has contacted East Carolina to see if they are interested.

  14. 1. Flurda – a white-hot hate that will never be extinguished.
    2. Tech – we should never lose to them. Their fans are clueless and smell of mothballs.
    3. Auburn – meh. Just because we’re the South’s Oldest Rivalry, I guess.

  15. 1. Auburn
    2. Tech
    3. Florida

    I hope we never have a football schedule without those three opponents. If we ever do not have one, two or three of them on the schedule it is because we have dominated them so much they have opted to stop playing football.

  16. Florida (FTMF’s!)
    Auburn
    Tech

    I’d put 10RC and Clem’s son tied for 4th, because fuck everything orange. Bama is always a big game with a trophy on the line, but so is playing THE Bucknuts, usually.

  17. The last game I saw as a student in Sanford was auburn in 1979. I didn’t like losing but my hatred for auburn started when they ripped up pieces of the hedges after the game. auburn sucks first, last and always.

  18. All about the Gators and the Barn. Don’t care about half our Vols games going away, it reduces the risk of ACL tears by half.

  19. Like others here I didn’t always hate Auburn like I do now. I wanted to beat them. But when we weren’t playing them I sort of rooted for them because my daddy was an Auburn alumnus. Other than that he was hands down the best person I have ever known. Hey nobody’s perfect. The Cammmy Cam Cams year changed everything to me. And that was even before we played them that year. The Nick Fairley stuff was the icing on the cake. It was all of it. Having to watch that narcissistic dick bag Newton grin after every single play that season. Seeing him and Auburn cast as a “feel good” story rather than what they obviously were. And watching their fans defend every minute of it while saying, “Prove it.” when anybody stated the obvious about Cammy. Hell they still show the Nick Fairley hit on Aaron Murray on their stadium video board. They’re proud of all that shit. I’ll always hate them for that season.

  20. You know that at some time in the past, you folks would be trying to decide who you hated more as a rival “Tulane or Sewanee”. Your grandkids are going to be arguing between “Texas or UCLA”.

  21. I was at UGA in the Herschell years. It was always the big three at the end of the schedule in those days… ditch lizards, east alabama reform school, and the north ave. trade school.
    That being said….
    my biggest rival today is whatever sumbitches we play on Saturday.

Comments are closed.