Rowe: Hey Georgia fans, here you go

Reminders are good. Some are annoying, most are innocuous, but they’re almost all good because they make you think about something that you probably should be thinking about but aren’t. Georgia fans can read on to get one from me.

What will transpire in Sanford Stadium on Saturday doesn’t happen. It’s going to happen now, but it has never happened before and might never again. No. 1 Georgia will host No. 2 Tennessee in the highest-ranked AP matchup in the history of the place.

The College Football Playoff Committee didn’t cooperate in its initial rankings on Tuesday. Tennessee is ranked No. 1 and Georgia is ranked No. 3. Still, it’s the first top-three matchup in the history of Sanford Stadium

It’s only the third time in venue history that it has hosted a top five game. The first was vs. Georgia Tech in 1942 and the second was in 1983 against Auburn.

Sanford Stadium is almost three times as big as it was in 1942 and nearly 12,000 seats have been added since 1983. It should be electric. It should be the type of atmosphere you tell your grand kids about. It should be historic.

There have been some great ones in that stadium. Many talk about the 2013 top-10 matchup with LSU and how it was the craziest they’ve ever seen. That was a 3:30 p.m. ET game played in September. The Blackout game vs. Auburn in 2007 was electric and I’ve heard that the 2021 Arkansas game, which began at noon, is an underrated one before the game got out of hand.

But this isn’t the biggest game that has been played over off Field Street in a long time. It’s the biggest one ever. So much is riding on it. The loser has almost no shot of getting into the SEC Championship game. It has an outside shot at the College Football Playoff but it needs help.

The winner? Well that team might be punching a ticket to the College Football Playoff. The stakes are as high as they get for a regular-season College Football game.

Will this atmosphere be one that is talked about for decades? Will stories be told about it? Will sportswriters still bring it up years later like those of us on the UGA beat do from time to time about Auburn in 2017? That didn’t turn out well for the visiting team.

There has been some complaining about regular-season home opponents for a little while now. There just haven’t been that many huge games and even fewer in the conference. This. Is. The one.

Georgia may need it…

Listen, I know there are plenty of Georgia fans who are super confident about this game. They see Tennessee as a flash in the pan of sorts. They see how Alabama gave the Volunteers 17 penalties for 130 yards. They see how LSU fumbled the opening kickoff and Kentucky didn’t seem to think throwing it to players on their own team might work.

If that’s your opinion, I won’t spend much time arguing with you but mine is that Tennessee is a damn good football team. Sometimes when you say that someone or something has caught lightning in a bottle, it rings of luck or overachievement. I say that about Tennessee while also knowing that Georgia won’t be playing a team that leans on either of those things this coming Saturday.

Tennessee is explosive and physical on offense. It is opportunistic and relentless on defense. The former is showing no signs of letting up and the latter is getting better. It’s going to be a battle.

A request…

This is a reminder as well. Let’s all be grateful College Football fans this week. Trash will be talked. Tennessee fans are going to talk themselves into an upset blowout victory. Georgia fans are going to lay out a million different scenarios with the Bulldogs physically dominating the Volunteers as the endpoint.

Georgia opened as an 11-ish point favorite for a reason. The Bulldogs should play well and win this one at home. But the ball bounces weird and good teams sometimes don’t let road crowds bother them.

Either way, enjoy this. Enjoy the nervous energy and something to really, really, really, really look forward to. Who knows when it’ll happen again?