One of the headline games from Week 2 in college football is an incredibly rare matchup between the Georgia Bulldogs and the Notre Dame Fighting Irish. The only previous meeting between the two programs took place on January 1st, 1981 in the Sugar Bowl. Georgia won that game 17-10 on their way to their second national championship in program history and Herschel Walker was named MVP.
But this particular meeting in South Bend, Indiana is made all the more special and unique because of the Bulldogs’ visit up north. You see, SEC teams have juuuuuuuuuuust a bit of a reputation (especially outside of SEC country) of being resistant to taking a lot of road trips north of the Mason-Dixon line.
The future home and home series recently signed between Auburn and Penn State will be the Tigers’ first ever regular season matchup against a Big Ten team. When Florida lost to Michigan this weekend, it was the first time they had played a non-conference game out of state since all the way back in 1991. And although Alabama did make a trip to Penn State as part of a home and home in 2011, the Tide and Nick Saban are almost now exclusively playing all of their big non-conference matchups at neutral sites.
You can put Georgia in that same category. Gridiron Now dug up this great nugget – Goergia’s trip to South Bend this week is the Bulldogs’ first game north of the Mason-Dixon line since all the way back in 1965! Yes, it’s Georgia’s first trip north in 52 years!
In 1965, legendary head coach Vince Dooley was in just his third season as head coach when Georgia made their second ever visit to Ann Arbor to play the Michigan Wolverines. Georgia had lost on their first trip there in 1957 but gained some revenge when they beat the Wolverines on the road by a score of 15-7. Here’s a quick screengrab of the 1965 season from Georgia’s media guide.
To help put that length of time in further perspective, this last visit from Georgia to the midwest came before any Super Bowl was ever played. In fact, Hang On Sloopy was the #1 song in the nation when Georgia last played a game in the midwest, which ironically has become one of the anthems of Ohio State football.
The Bulldogs have ventured some distance away from Athens in recent years, playing a few road games outside of the traditional south. In 2008 they defeated Arizona State 28-10 in Tempe, in 2009 they lost 24-10 to Oklahoma State in Stillwater, and in 2010 they lost 29-27 to Colorado in Boulder.
It’s a common complaint from Big Ten fans that their schools always have to travel to the south for bowl games in January while SEC teams never have the opportunity to make the return trip. But let’s forget about the endless debates about conference superiority and the north/south bragging rights living vicariously through college football for just a moment and celebrate the occasion.
It’s a great thing for the sport for Georgia to be playing Notre Dame in the shadow of Touchdown Jesus this Saturday. And it’ll be a great thing for the sport when the Irish make the return trip and play between the hedges in 2019. Any time schools scan go away from the soulless paydays of neutral site games and get these huge matchups back on campus it’s a win for college football. The same is true for the massive Oklahoma-Ohio State showdown this weekend.
To be honest, with so many of these opening week games being played at neutral sites, they all begin to blend together somewhat. Seriously, did Purdue-Louisville really need to be played in Indianapolis??? What about NC State vs South Carolina or Georgia Tech versus Tennessee? These games just feel more special on campus where they belong. And in the Playoff Era, teams are encouraged to take more chances and play big non-conference games instead of loading up on cupcakes. Hopefully we will see more and more of these history-making matchups like Georgia’s trip to South Bend in the coming years instead of just another game in a dome.
