Not all Southeastern Conference football rivalries have been required to take place on an annual basis.
Paul “Bear” Bryant’s Alabama Crimson Tide and Vince Dooley’s Georgia Bulldogs produced memorable meetings in both the 1960s and 1970s, and the more recent showdowns between Nick Saban’s Tide and Urban Meyer’s Florida Gators often had gargantuan national implications. Even more recent contests between Saban and Georgia’s Kirby Smart had titles at stake as well, but with Saban now retired from coaching, could the SEC’s marquee matchup moving forward be Smart’s Bulldogs against Steve Sarkisian’s Texas Longhorns?
“I think those are the two premier programs and premier coaches in college football,” Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin said last week at the SEC media days event in Atlanta. “I think those two just do an amazing job. Having worked with both of them and with both of them having been at Alabama and seeing how they’ve used that, and then with Sarkisian having been at USC as well and how he’s used Pete Carroll things from there — I just think they both do an amazing job.
“In those SEC meetings, you’re always listening to those coaches and their input, and I feel like both of them really run their programs truly as a CEO. They know everything that’s going on. They’re very creative with their ideas and how to navigate through this world we’re in now. They’re really good friends and really good people, and they’re phenomenal coaches.”
Texas has been in the SEC for only one season, but the Bulldogs and Longhorns played twice last year, with Georgia prevailing 30-15 during their October encounter in Austin and 22-19 in overtime when they met again in Atlanta for the league championship in early December. The two teams will collide inside Sanford Stadium on Nov. 15, and there is a possibility of four meetings in two seasons between the two given that Texas and Georgia recently were picked to finish 1-2 in this year’s SEC race.
Incidentally, Georgia has faced Texas A&M only once since the Aggies entered the SEC in 2012, and Texas A&M has yet to qualify for the league championship game.
“We’re the University of Texas, and the standard is the standard here, which is competing for championships year in and year out,” Sarkisian said last week. “That didn’t change when we were in the previous conference, and that hasn’t changed now that we’re in the SEC. It’s not what other people think about us or what other people say about us. It’s about what we do, and that’s taking action and doing things the right way.
“I think this is a championship roster. Now we’ve got to play like a championship team.”
Several months after Smart left following his eight-year run as Alabama’s defensive coordinator to become head coach at his alma mater, Sarkisian was hired by Saban as an offensive analyst for the 2016 season. Saban parted ways with Kiffin after Alabama’s 24-7 downing of Washington in the Peach Bowl national semifinal in the College Football Playoff, and he handed play-calling duties to Sarkisian for the title contest against Clemson in Tampa, Florida, a thriller the Tide would lose 35-31.
Sarkisian had the opportunity to assume the coordinator role under Saban in 2017 but spent two seasons instead with the NFL’s Atlanta Falcons. He returned to Tuscaloosa as the coordinator for the 2019-20 seasons, with Alabama’s 2020 team averaging 541.6 yards and 48.5 points per game in cruising to the national championship.
The 2020 Tide had three of the top five finishers in the Heisman Trophy balloting — receiver DeVonta Smith, quarterback Mac Jones and running back Najee Harris — and they capped their dominant season with a 52-24 thrashing of Ohio State.
While Smart placed Georgia back among the nation’s elite programs in his second season in 2017, Sarkisian accomplished the feat in his third year. The Longhorns were 13-12 his first two seasons but then went 25-5 the past two years with two playoff trips.
“I think if you’re going to beat a good football team, you’ve got to be a sound football team yourself,” Smart said. “I didn’t overlap with Sark at Alabama, but I have tremendous respect for him and his program and the job they do. To beat good teams, you’ve got to be a good team, and we had a good football team last year.
“So did they, but it’s not about us as coaches. It’s really about the players and what you believe in.”
Most marquee pairings of SEC teams through the years have involved Alabama — the Florida-Tennessee games of the mid-to-late 1990s may be the most notable exception — so it’s not like the Tide will idly sit by and let Georgia-Texas replace Alabama-Georgia as the league’s game to cherish moving forward. The Bulldogs do have the advantage of Atlanta’s recruiting base, as do the Longhorns with the entire Lone Star State, but recruiting is far more national now, and Saban significantly increased the Tide’s footprint with nine SEC championships and six national titles in his 17 seasons from 2007-23.
There is also the matter of Alabama second-year coach Kalen DeBoer owning a 2-0 career record against Sarkisian and being 1-0 against Smart.
“Coach Sark is an elite football mind and an elite football coach,” DeBoer said. “He’s been doing it as a coordinator and as a head coach on a high level. Going into the times we’ve played them, I had nothing but the most respect, and walking out of them, that didn’t change.
“It showed just even in his transition to the SEC last year and how he evolved and made those adjustments and did the things he had to do to put himself in a spot to not only play for a championship but also in the playoffs.”
Contact David Paschall at dpaschall@timesfreepress.com.