Georgia-Auburn: ‘It’s what college football is all about,’ Chizik says

It isn’t the bitterest of Georgia’s football rivalries. Just the oldest and most competitive.

Georgia and Auburn first played in Atlanta’s Piedmont Park in 1892. They have played 113 times since then. Auburn has won 53. Georgia has won 52. They have tied eight.

So, if Georgia were to win this year’s meeting at Auburn on Saturday, the Deep South’s oldest college-football rivalry would pull completely even at 53-53-8.

After all these games, all these years, only 56 points separate the teams. Georgia has scored 1,778 and Auburn 1,722.  The average score in their meetings is 15.7-15.2.

“I think that as we go on during the week the younger guys will get a better picture of what this rivalry is and has been over the years and what it’s meant,” Auburn coach Gene Chizik said Sunday. “It’s just a great rivalry. It’s what college football is all about.”

At 113 games, the Georgia-Auburn series is older than Georgia-Georgia Tech (102 games) and Auburn-Alabama (74 games).

Georgia has won the past four meetings, the Bulldogs’ longest winning streak in the series since the 1940s. As Chizik mentioned Sunday, no current Auburn player has experienced a win over Georgia.

Over the years, it has been a curious series in that the road team has won more often than the home team. Georgia has an all-time record of 14-9-2 in games played at Auburn, while the Tigers have an 18-11 record in Athens. The series was mostly played at neutral sites from 1892 through 1958.

Another quirk in the Georgia-Auburn series in recent years is that the lower-ranked team has found disproportionate success. Neither team was ranked entering last year’s game, but the lower-ranked or unranked team has won seven of the past 13 meetings when one or both teams were ranked. As you know, Auburn will go into Saturday’s game ranked No. 2 in the nation and Georgia unranked. In the last meeting of a ranked Auburn vs. an unranked Georgia, the Bulldogs upset the No. 5 Tigers 37-15 in 2006 at Auburn.