No big deal, just the biggest Georgia football game in five years.
SEC championship. Georgia vs. Auburn. Winner goes to the College Football Playoff at either the Rose or Sugar Bowls.
Oh, and the game is being played at gleaming and fancy new Mercedes-Benz Stadium. So much has already written, what more can be said? We shall try, so check here for regular updates and observations.
Crowd factor
Gus Malzahn said Friday that he’d heard that Georgia would end up with more fans, and that seems reasonable. But how many more?
Just walking in, there were a lot more red shirts and jackets than blue-and-orange. I’ve seen some people predict a three-to-one advantage for Georgia inside the stadium by the time the game begins.
We shall see. Geography isn’t a huge factor: These are actually the two closest schools to this site: Athens is approximately 73 miles away, while Auburn is 109 miles. (It’s about a three-way tie for third between Tuscaloosa, Knoxville and Columbia, S.C., depending on which side of those towns you’re heading.)
Malzahn opined that Georgia fans would be at an advantage because they’ve known for longer their team would be in the team – four whole weeks, while Auburn only stamped its ticket a week ago. The other sub-plot is what Alabama fans, so used to coming to this game and perhaps buying tickets prematurely, did with their tickets: Sell to UGA fans just so they don’t help their arch-rival, or sell to the highest bidders, who may have been Auburn fans?
In the end, it’s not an insignificant factor: Jordan-Hare Stadium and its atmosphere have been an immense help to Auburn. And as this is being typed the in-house monitors at the stadium are showing the 2013 SEC championship, when Auburn had an immense crowd advantage against Missouri. It was still a close game until then-No. 3 Auburn pulled away from then-No. 5 Missouri in the fourth quarter.
Georgia, of course, has appeared in this game five times, each time as the closest school in proximity, but is only 2-3.
The betting line
Whether it’s the status of Kerryon Johnson or just a sense about the rematch, money appears to be going towards Georgia to win this game.
The Bulldogs are now favored by 1.5 points, per the consensus on VegasInsider.com, after the Tigers opened as a 2.5-point favorite.
Johnson’s injury looms large in that consideration. Still, it’s quite remarkable that so many are putting money on the team that lost by 23 points in the first game just three weeks ago. There’s a lot of faith in Kirby Smart and his team figuring out what went wrong and fixing it.
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