The Georgia Bulldogs will be heading back to Jacksonville for the second time in two months, to play a team they played a year ago.
The No. 22-ranked Bulldogs (8-4) were selected by the TaxSlayer.com Gator Bowl to play in their Jan. 1 game at Jacksonville Memorial Stadium, as expected. But instead of Michigan, which the bowl had hoped to match against Georgia for the first time in 49 years, the Gator had to go with the Nebraska Cornhuskers. The game is set for a noon kickoff and will be televised on ESPN2.
“They’re obviously a good team,” Georgia coach Mark Richt said on a teleconference call Sunday night accepting the official bowl bid. “We think we’re a good team, too. We had a great battle last year and we’ll see what happens this year.”
The Bulldogs were one of 10 SEC teams to accept bowl invitations on Sunday. No. 2 Auburn will play No. 1 FSU in the BCS National Championship on Jan. 6 and Alabama will play Oklahoma in the Nokia Sugar Bowl. The others matchups are Missouri-Oklahoma State in the Cotton Bowl, South Carolina-Wisconsin in the Capital One Bowl, LSU-Iowa in the Outback Bowl, Texas A&M-Duke in the Chick-fil-A Bowl, Ole Miss-Georgia Tech in the Music City Bowl, Mississippi State-Rice in the Liberty Bowl and Vanderbilt-Houston in the BBVA Compass Bowl.
The Gator gets the sixth selection from the SEC and the fourth selection from the Big Ten. But they were undone when the Buffalo Wild Wings Bowl in Tempe, Ariz., which picks third, took the 7-5 Wolverines over the 8-4 Cornhuskers. Georgia played Nebraska last year in the Capital One Bowl in Orlando, winning 45-31 behind quarterback Aaron Murray’s five touchdown passes.
Gator Bowl president and CEO Rick Catlett took the change of plans in stride.
“It doesn’t matter at all to us,” he said. “We had Michigan and Nebraska on one side and Georgia and LSU on the other. We feel like we got one of the best matchups out there.”
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