Field Street Forum

For a school record seventh straight week, Georgia is the unanimous No. 1 team in the AP and Coaches polls. This seven-week stretch of being the unanimous No. 1 in the AP poll matches Alabama’s run during the 2018 season for the longest ever going back to 1936. Currently, Georgia is ranked No. 1 in the College Football Playoff poll. The fourth 2021 CFP ranking will be released on Tuesday. Georgia is 4-0 versus ranked teams, including a pair of top-10 wins. The Bulldogs are the only team in the nation with eight wins versus opponents that have a winning record.

This is the first time since 1982 that the Bulldogs are 11-0. Georgia looks to become only the fourth team in school history to finish a regular season undefeated and untied with double-digit victories and then play for a national title (1946, 1980, 1982). Vince Dooley’s 1980 consensus national champions was the last Georgia squad to go 12-0 after defeating Notre Dame in the Sugar Bowl. Incidentally, the school record for wins in a season is 13, and that’s been done twice (2002 under Mark Richt and 2017 under Kirby Smart).

• Georgia leads the series 68-39-5 and doesn’t count two Georgia Tech wins during WWII (1943-44) when the Yellow Jackets utilized players from a naval officer’s training program hosted on campus. The Bulldogs have won the past 10 meetings in Atlanta dating back to 2001 and the last three in a row in the series. The teams did not play in 2020 as the SEC played a 10-game league-only slate due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
• Since 1995, the winner of the Georgia-Georgia Tech game has been awarded the Governor’s Cup Trophy. Since then, the Bulldogs are 19-6 in that stretch.
• The Georgia-Georgia Tech series is one of the nation’s oldest. There are only 13 other FBS rivalries that have been played more with Minnesota-Wisconsin at the top with 130 games and Georgia-Auburn tied for second now with 126. UW meets UM Saturday in Minneapolis, and the Badgers have a slight series lead at 62-60-8.
• From 1917-24, Georgia and Georgia Tech did not play each other because of a dispute caused by a Georgia parade float that ridiculed Tech for playing football during World War I.
• Georgia Tech’s 51-48 win in overtime in 1999 in Atlanta on ABC was the highest-scoring game in the series and featured 1,102 total yards of offense. In overtime, Georgia blocked the Yellow Jackets’ first field goal attempt on third down and the Jackets recovered it. Then, Luke Manget kicked a 38-yarder on the mulligan for the win.
• In 1978, Georgia trailed 20-0 in the 2nd quarter when freshman Buck Belue came off the sideline and rallied the team to a 29-28 win, the biggest comeback in school history to that point.
• Georgia closed out the 2002 regular season in Athens with a 51-7 thrashing of Georgia Tech on CBS. It was the most points ever for a Bulldog squad against the Yellow Jackets.