EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the seventh story in a series on the 15 most memorable SEC football games beat writer David Paschall has covered since joining the newspaper in 1990. The games are being presented in chronological order.
The biggest certainty within the first 10 Southeastern Conference football championship games was that the Eastern Division representative would be wearing some shade of orange.
Florida won seven and Tennessee claimed three Eastern titles from 1992 to 2001, but the 2002 East champ donned red and black.
It took a 19-yard touchdown pass from David Greene to Michael Johnson on fourth-and-15 with 1:25 remaining to catapult Georgia to a 24-21 victory at Auburn and a trip to the SEC title contest in Atlanta’s Georgia Dome. That short trek was rewarding for Mark Richt’s Bulldogs, who routed an inferior Arkansas 30-3 to clinch the program’s first league championship since legendary running back Herschel Walker’s third and final season in 1982.
The 2002 Bulldogs thrived in close games, and had Johnson not caught Greene’s pass over Auburn defensive back Horace Willis in the back left corner of the end zone, that year’s league championship contest instead would have pitted Tommy Tuberville’s Tigers against Ron Zook’s Florida Gators.