The Georgia Bulldogs have no shortage of rivals. One of the metrics that I use to mark a successful season is whether or not we beat Auburn, Florida, Tech, and Tennessee, which means a full third of most seasons consists of rivalry games.
I don’t really like the 16-team SEC or what it signals about the future of the sport with the emergence of superleagues. Still, it’s going to happen whether I want it to or not, so it’s worth finding ways to continue enjoying things even as they change. The upshot to these megaconferences is that we’re getting more helmet matchups now. As blueblood teams play each other more often, new rivalries will emerge in this landscape.
To that end, I submit that we might be seeing the emergence of a new rivalry between ourselves and the Austin Beefcattle. Let’s look at the evidence (that I have selectively cherry-picked to support my point).
Deep History
The main qualification for a rival is a deep, shared history. Georgia and Texas don’t have a terribly extensive history together, which is a strike against my theory. They’ve played seven times in their histories, with the ’Horns holding a slight, 4-3 lead in the series. Texas won a meeting in 1948 and both legs of a home-and-home in 1957 and 1958. But the two teams faced off in the Cotton Bowl after the 1983 season, the Dawgs would emerge victorious by a score of 10 to 9. That win prevented the second-ranked Longhorns from claiming a national championship that year. (For what it’s worth, UGA could probably claim a title for that year with some legitimacy, but honor forbids it.)
As I’ve said here before, Hilltop Grille is one of my favorite restaurants in Athens. When I still lived in the Classic City, I stopped in every Sunday during the season for the Bulldog Brunch. After a win, I usually got the prime rib and a celebratory mimosa. After a loss, I still usually got the prime rib but with a side of bacon and enough beer to drown the sorrows. If I still lived in Athens, the city’s cardiology practice would be able to put their kids through college just on my tab alone.
Framed in the Hilltop lobby is one of my favorite photographs from Bulldog lore: It’s a picture of John Lastinger scoring what would be the winning touchdown over Texas in the 1984 Cotton Bowl. It’s autographed with the inscription “It’s still 10 to nine in Dallas!”
I have a dear friend and former graduate school colleague who is an avid Texas fan. Because I am both a terrible friend and an inveterate trash talker, every time I went to Hilltop, I would snap a shot of the Lastinger picture and send it to her, asking, “What time is it?” Inexplicably, we’re still friends today.
Apart from my frequent sojurns to Hilltop, I didn’t think about the Texas Longhorns all that much. I had rooted for the 2005 team primarily because I enjoyed playing as them in the Xbox game. But Texas had largely faded from the national spotlight after losing to Alabama in the national championship after the 2009 season and hadn’t played Georgia in my lifetime.
Bad Blood
Then 2018 happened. After Georgia came up just shy in the 2018 SEC Championship Game, we drew them as our opponent for the Sugar Bowl. The Longhorns had lost to Oklahoma in the Big 12 championship but looked like they might be returning to prominence under the leadership of Tom Herman, who had been rumored as a candidate for the Georgia job after Richt’s dismissal. Still, I anticipated steamrolling a 9-3 Texas team in New Orleans.
What followed was maybe the most desultory, disappointing performance of the Kirby Smart era. Everyone remembers Bevo nearly stomping poor Que flat because some ding-dong got the bright idea to put a bull inside an incredibly loud stadium. The botched pregame photo op was an ill omen if ever there was one.
The game itself began with an equally dismal portent. Georgia’s first possession ended in an attempted punt on which Jake Camarda’s knee touched the ground as he got the snap, giving Texas a short field. That gaffe set the tone for a soggy diaper of a game where Georgia played like the team had dinner reservations to make. Despite the 28-21 final score, the game was never close. At one point, Herman appeared to chuckle to himself after a Georgia injury.
In the trophy presentation, Sam Ehlinger crowed “We’re baaaaaack.” I felt the rage-crucible in my heart begin to burn with a searing, white calefaction. Prior to the Sugar Bowl, I was neutral to slightly positive on the Longhorns. After, I hated them.
One of the defining hallmarks of a rivalry is that the anguish of losing to them is worse than a normal loss. For instance, I hate losing to Tech more than I like beating them. So, while Texas isn’t going to eclipse Florida anytime soon, we’ve got some material to work with here.
Huge Wins
In 2024, we got to welcome Texas to the SEC with a regular season matchup in Austin. On that October night, Texas was ranked #1 and looked to be the cream of the SEC crop. Georgia came into the game after a wobbly matchup against Mississippi State that didn’t inspire much confidence. What transpired was one of the season’s wildest games.
Carson Beck was struck with a bad case of orange-white colorblindness and threw three picks. That would’ve been disastrous had Jalon Walker not been a one-man wrecking crew, spending the entire night chasing Quinn Ewers (and briefly Arch Manning) as he ran for his life. Then, in one of the craziest sequences I’ve ever seen, the Texas fans stopped play and got a call they didn’t like overturned. In all my years of football watching, I have never seen anything like this. This incident alone should be enough to earn Texas an especially irksome place in Dawg fans’ hearts. Also, you’ll be shocked to hear that the school’s thorough post-game investigation ended with nobody being punished.
As if that wasn’t enough, we got to see the ’Horns again in Atlanta with a conference championship on the line. A football truism that I’ve always believed is that it’s really hard to beat a good team twice in one season. Buuut…we did. And that’s with Texas giving Carson Beck the Rick Allen treatment at the end of the first half and Beck having to make the final play of the game with one functional arm after Stockton got blasted at the goal line in OT.
On this score, I think we’re cooking as well.
High Stakes
Ideally, you want your rivalry games to mean as much as possible. It’s always fun to beat Tennessee. It was more fun to beat them in 2022 when they were undefeated and with playoff ambitions.
Tomorrow’s matchup against Texas is about as big as they come. It should be a nice, cool fall night, and I anticipate the crowd to come in hot and ready to rumble after the PI debacle in last year’s game. This is the tinder that fuels the fire of a rivalry.
The Longhorns need a win to keep their postseason hopes alive after a disappointing season that they started ranked #1. I do think, though, Texas is probably the only SEC team that could make the playoff field with three losses based on what the committee has done with them so far. Still, they really need to win this game.
For our part, a win here gives us a shot at another trip to Atlanta. Though the merits of playing in the SECCG remain debateable, but I will never turn my nose up at winning the conference, so this would be a huge win to stack. And while I don’t think we’re going to lose to Tech in Atlanta, winning this one more or less clinches a playoff spot.
More broadly, this year’s Dawgs are something of a rabbit-duck. Are they undisciplined and sluggish, digging themselves into holes and playing soft until it’s almost too late? Or are they gritty and determined, overcoming extensive adversity to win no matter the odds? This game should give us some more definitive answers against a playoff-caliber opponent.
Will Texas ever be a rival like Florida or Auburn? Almost certainly no. But whatever the stakes, I also enjoy beating Texas as an end in itself. Because it’s nice to do to someone else what Alabama always does to us.
