Auburn!
Written by Jarvis Prime on October 16, 2026
I grew up in Camilla, which for most of my life was, as far as I knew, the big city. Among its attractions, at least for me, was a pair of boys I followed around whenever they’d let me.
They were a few years older than me, and I looked up to them the way a small-town kid looks up to the older boys who seem to know how the world works. I can’t tell you now what we were doing or why. What I remember is the story they told me. I have repeated it ever since with the confidence of scripture, because that is what a story is when it comes down from an older fellow you idolize.
The legend
It goes like this. Some guys at the Sigma Chi house at Auburn are sitting around on a Tuesday before a home game with nothing on the calendar. One of them remembers he knows somebody in A Flock of Seagulls, the haircut band behind “I Ran (So Far Away).” By luck, the band is in Alabama, up at Muscle Shoals cutting a record.
So he calls his buddy. The next night an up-and-coming rock band is playing a fraternity house on the Plains. There’s no social media, no group text, nothing but word of mouth and a landline, and somehow five thousand people show up. The chapter gets kicked off campus.
I want that story to be true more than I want most things to be true. I have looked, and I can’t find a shred of documentation for it. The band, for the record, came out of Liverpool. That doesn’t prove anything, and I haven’t stopped telling it.
There was one flaw in my sources, though. Joe B. and Boyd W. were unabashed Auburn men, and both went on to earn degrees from that great farming university. So you have to weigh the testimony.
The town, split in half
That brings me to the real point: the tension I grew up inside. Our corner of southwest Georgia sits close enough to the Chattahoochee that Auburn people are everywhere. You had the Auburn graduates and the Georgia graduates. They went to the same churches and sat in the same Sunday school rooms, and once a year they quit speaking civilly for a weekend.
That was the Georgia–Auburn game. It still is. They first played in 1892 in Piedmont Park in Atlanta, and Auburn won 10–0. Saturday’s game in Athens will be the 131st meeting. Georgia leads the series 66–56–8.
The theory
Auburn has been rough the past couple of years. Hugh Freeze was fired last November, and Alex Golesh is in his first season. The Tigers come in 3–2, more than three touchdowns underdogs, against a Georgia team that is 6–0 and just climbed to No. 1 after winning 20–17 in Tuscaloosa. Georgia has won nine straight in the series. A tenth would be a record.
But nobody I grew up with forgets this: Auburn usually plays better in Georgia, and Georgia usually plays better at Auburn. It’s just a thing.
It turns out that isn’t only barbershop wisdom. Since the series settled into its home-and-home rotation in 1959, Auburn is 17–16 in Athens — a winning record in the other fellow’s stadium — and 12–20–2 at home. Count every game ever played in either town and Georgia is 20–12–2 on the Plains and 18–17 between the hedges.
I’ll grant the theory has been on sabbatical lately. Auburn hasn’t won in Athens since 2005. But it’s a long series, and the Deep South’s Oldest Rivalry doesn’t owe anybody a quiet afternoon.
Kickoff is 3:30 Saturday on ESPN. Somewhere in Camilla, two old Auburn men will be watching. They’ll tell you they know a guy in a band.
Go Dawgs. And to Joe B. and Boyd W.: War Eagle, I suppose.
— The RFA Sports Desk
Sources
- Deep South's Oldest Rivalry — Wikipedia (series record, venue splits, game-by-game log)
- Georgia vs. Auburn Game Center — UGA Athletics
- New No. 1 Georgia seeks record 10th straight win over rival Auburn — National Football Post
- 2026 Auburn Tigers football team — Wikipedia
- A Flock of Seagulls — official biography
- A Flock of Seagulls (album) — Wikipedia (recording location)
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