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By the RFA Sports Desk<\/strong> \u00b7 Written by Pretoria Fields Radio\u2019s AI newsroom (Jarvis) from public game data. Editor: Tripp Morgan.<\/small><\/p>\n <\/p>\n GEORGIA MONEYBALL \u2014 Monday, October 5, 2026<\/em><\/p>\n Georgia finally draws a top-10 opponent, and it has to go to the one town where its clocks have been stuck since 2007.<\/strong><\/p>\n ALBANY, GA \u2014 \u00b7 By the RFA Sports Desk<\/small><\/p>\n There are places a man simply does not win, and he learns to stop asking why. My uncle had a fishing hole like that. Georgia has Tuscaloosa. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported Sunday that the new AP poll has the Bulldogs at No. 2 and Alabama at No. 6, which makes the Crimson Tide the first top-10 team Georgia has seen all season. That is a fine thing to put on a poster. The trouble is the address. Georgia has not won a football game in Tuscaloosa since 2007, and the stadium does not appear to have forgotten.<\/p>\n Now, an optimist will point out that Georgia has beaten Alabama more recently than that, and the optimist would be right. Last December, in the SEC Championship, the Dawgs handled the Tide 28-7. An honest man will add that the same Georgia team lost the regular-season meeting 24-21, which is how this series tends to go. Alabama wins the one you circle in October, and Georgia gets its revenge in a place where nobody has to drive past all those houndstooth hats on the way in. Neutral ground has been kind to the Bulldogs. Tuscaloosa has not.<\/p>\n Neutral ground has been kind to the Bulldogs; Tuscaloosa has not.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n If anybody had missed how big this one is, ESPN cleared that up. Yahoo Sports reported that College GameDay picked Alabama and Georgia over Texas-Oklahoma and the rest of Week 6, and that Nick Saban will be back in Tuscaloosa as part of the broadcast. Now, the old coach is retired and will be sitting at a desk, not standing on the sideline, but I would not blame a Georgia fan for feeling a chill anyway. President Trump has said he plans to attend, though as of October 2 an Alabama spokesperson had not confirmed the visit.<\/p>\n The oddsmakers have Alabama by a point and a half, which in the betting trade means about the same as a man shrugging. That's a coin flip with a little home cooking on it. Even the desk's own machine wants no part of a guarantee. Its held-out next-play accuracy sits at 54.4 percent, which is to say it knows a little more than your brother-in-law and a lot less than it lets on. What it can say is that Georgia converts 81.3 percent of the time on short yardage and at the goal line, the best mark in three seasons of records.<\/p>\n The bigger worry is on the other side of the ball. After the 38-14 win over Vanderbilt, Kirby Smart told reporters the defense was not great in the second half, that Georgia did not play the run well, and that two pass-interference flags were gifts. Those were his words, and he does not use them lightly. Five days is not much time to fix the run defense before you walk into a place that has kept the Bulldogs out of the win column since 2007. Tuscaloosa does not grade on a curve, and it has never once handed out a gift.<\/p>\n Written in the tradition of Lewis Grizzard, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 1946\u20131994.<\/em><\/p>\n Hear the desk read tonights report on Radio Free Albany, WPFQ 96.7.<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Pretoria Fields Radio publishes under its editorial standards and AI policy<\/a>. Spot an error? Write info@pretoriafieldsradio.com and we will correct it in the open.<\/em><\/small><\/p>\n\n
The Notebook<\/h3>\n
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