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Looking at how well each team knows the conference's newest members
| Georgia History vs. New SEC Teams | |||
| First Meeting | Last Meeting | Record vs. | |
| Missouri | 1960 | 1960 | 1-0 |
| Texas A&M | 1950 |
2009 | 2-3 |
Like most of Missouri's new division rivals in the SEC East, Georgia has not played the Tigers very often. (Only Kentucky and Vanderbilt have played Missouri more than twice.)
Of course, the one game the Dawgs and the Tigers did play was the 1960 Orange Bowl, which capped off a 10-1 season for Georgia. That 14-0 shutout is one of the few high points in the SEC's bowl history against Mizzou.
Georgia has a bit more experience with Texas A&M -- though none of those games, oddly enough, have ever been played in College Station. And A&M, which won the first three games in the series, would likely be happy if you kindly forget the last two.
That's because Georgia has won those contests by a combined 86-20 margin. The 42-0 loss to Georgia's 1980 team can be explained, coming as it did in Athens to a team that went on to win the national championship. The 44-20 waxing in the 2009 Independence Bowl, the year before the low point of the Mark Richt Swoon, is a touch more puzzling. At least until you look at how the special teams performed in that game.
The other time the two teams met in the postseason, it was in the decidedly non-SEC city of College Park, Maryland. (Georgia, oddly enough, had opened the 1950 season against Maryland but in Athens.) The two teams competed in the 1950 Presidential Cup Bowl, an event so successful that the sponsors decided to never do it again. That game was just as lopsided as the Independence Bowl, but in a different direction. And it wasn't even really that close.
Texas A&M scored 40 points -- including the opening touchdown on a 100-yard kickoff return -- before Georgia even managed to scratch the scoreboard. By that point, the 20 points that the Dawgs did put up proved to be academic. The MVP of the game was the inconspicuously named Bob Smith, who had the kickoff return, as well as an 81-yard touchdown run that went toward Smith's 160 rushing yards.
The other two games -- one in Dallas and one in Athens -- were Texas A&M wins by two and six points, so there's hope that the game will be competitive once it finally arrives in College Station. Odds are also pretty good that a special teams play will have something to say about the outcome.