Look up the history of Clemson football and you won’t find many nonconference opponents the Tigers have played more often through the years than the Georgia Bulldogs.
Another chapter in the Clemson-Georgia rivalry will be written today when the Tigers face the Bulldogs at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta beginning at noon ET. The game can be seen on ABC.
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A quick look at various record books shows that Clemson has faced only two other nonconference foes more often than Georgia in the history of Tiger football, which began play in 1896.
One of those schools, of course, is South Carolina. The Palmetto Series dates back to the inaugural season of Clemson football, and the Tigers and Gamecocks have played almost every year since, sans the recent exception of 2020 (Captain Trips). With 120 all-time meetings, they are the most common opponent in each school’s history.
The only other nonconference member Clemson has played more often than Georgia is Maryland, a former ACC member who called the league home for over 60 years before joining the Big Ten in 2014.
The Tigers and Terrapins have met 62 times dating back to their days in the old Southern Conference. Both helped form the ACC in 1953 as conference charter members, along with Duke, North Carolina, North Carolina State, South Carolina and Wake Forest.
That brings us to Clemson vs. Georgia.
The schools, situated only 70 miles apart, held their first meeting in 1897. They met almost every year on the gridiron from 1962 to 1987 before a three-year pause. The Tigers and Bulldogs briefly resumed play in back-to-back years from 1990-91 and again in 1994-95.
It would be seven years before the two played another home-and-home series between Athens and Death Valley, and another 10 years after that when they met again in 2013 and 2014.
Georgia leads the all-time series, 43-18-4, and recent history has favored the Bulldogs. They have won all but four meetings since Clemson’s national championship season in 1981 under coach Danny Ford and are 10-4 in the last 14 matchups dating back to ’82. That includes the 10-3 slugfest in Charlotte to open the 2021 season.
This year’s meeting will mark the 65th time that the Tigers and Bulldogs will meet in head-to-head play. To put that into perspective, Clemson has faced Georgia more times than long-standing fellow ACC members North Carolina, Duke and Virginia.
The teams currently have no plans to resume meeting on an annual basis moving forward, though they’re scheduled to play home-and-home series in 2029-30 and again in 2032-33.
That could change if the next wave of conference realignment were to see Clemson join the SEC. Greg Sankey may be focused on the “16 is our today and 16 is our tomorrow” mantra he repeated at SEC Media Days in July, but that’s not to say that number is set in stone, given the uncertainty of the ACC’s future.
Whatever that future holds — for conference realignment, mega TV deals and college football as a whole — Clemson vs. Georgia will always be must-see TV.
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