LORAN SMITH: Historic rivalry stands taller with Georgia at No. 1

A rivalry game with a history brimming with vignettes that you would expect from the Deep South’s oldest such competition takes on a different meaning in some years — especially one in which so much is at stake as it is for Georgia this weekend.

The first question when you evaluate the current Auburn Tigers, without question the best team Georgia will have played (Notre Dame does not line up as many SEC talent-worthy players as Auburn and doesn’t have as much overall team speed), is how this team has managed to lose two games.

With a quarterback with superior abilities, Tiger partisans see Georgia as vulnerable on pass defense and will fill the box when the Tigers’ defense takes the field since they have concluded that Jake Fromm will have difficulty winning the game if he has to throw. That would be true in any matchup with a team that is a run-first advocate.

Georgia, to paraphrase Darrell Royal of Texas years ago, will “dance with what brung them.”

This is a game where Georgia brings much to the table. Comparisons may or may not mean anything. You can’t explain Ohio State’s collapse last weekend, and Georgia aficionados are now aware that no means of determining a national championship can be totally fair.

All Notre Dame has to do is win out, and the Irish are in the playoffs. Losing late in the season, depending on the opponent, is not positive for gaining a playoff spot. Faith in the Bulldogs nonetheless remains.

Members of the playoff committee have sealed lips, but there are enough vibes out there to confirm that Georgia’s balance and strength of schedule has influenced the voters’ thinking.

You liken the Bulldogs’ situation to a race driver. You lead the Daytona 500 for 197 laps and then some malfunction, like a flat tire or a wreck on one of the final three laps causes you to lose the race — but who would not like to be in the Bulldogs’ shoes today?

The team with the best record in the country the past decade has been Alabama, and they often lose a game a year. The trick is losing the “right” game, which usually means losing one early which enables you to overcome a loss and rebound into the playoff picture.

Head coach Kirby Smart is building his program for the long haul. Back-to-back-to-back-to-back recruiting classes that are among the very top ranked classes in the country — never having an off year. With the recruiting base he has in Georgia, he realizes that that objective can be achieved.

He is the first to offer a tip of the hat to high school coaches, and not just in Georgia. Players come to campus with a three-year plan. Compete with definitive playing time for three years and then move on to the NFL. If you are going to compete for championships, you must replace cogent talent with cogent talent.

I have long been intrigued by the philosophy of Tennessee’s Robert Neyland, who espoused the view that could only get your team up for a peak performance more than once, perhaps twice, a season. The General has the best winning percentage in the history of the SEC with 82 percent. He played as soft a schedule as possible and held the view that you never played two tough games back to back.

Coaches can’t manipulate scheduling today as Neyland could. The Saban model at Alabama has been to out-recruit everybody. Knowing your team is likely to experience an off day, he can beat you on those days because he has deeper talent.

We all should be reminded that, with all due respect to Auburn’s competency, Smart is not taking a team with abundant shortcomings across the Chattahoochee this weekend. He has prepared his team with knowledge of Auburn’s history and tradition from having coached against Auburn for nine years while at Alabama. His record versus the Tigers is 6-3 during that time.

From the beginning, he has coached this team to respect the competition, play hard and keep your mouth shut. This team won’t panic, but it knows to win against a team as good as Auburn, which is playing at home where crowd noise reaches decibels as high as any venue in the SEC, will require two basic things: playing a peak game and winning the turnover battle.

In a quirk that is about as odd as any in modern day football, both Georgia and Auburn have a better record on the road than at home since the game went home and home in 1959 — leaving Columbus and old Memorial Stadium on Veterans Parkway. (Auburn has a 18-14 record in Athens, and Georgia’s record at Auburn is 16-11-2).

Memorial Stadium officially seated about 15,000 but it seemed as if that twice as many found their way into the stadium, which prompted the late Shug Jordan, Auburn’s longtime head coach, to remark that if you got up to go to the bathroom, you lost your seat.

Loran Smith is co-host of “The Tailgate Show” and sideline announcer for Georgia football. He is also a freelance writer and columnist.