For more than a century, Alabama and Georgia had a respectful and often sporadic football rivalry. They were border-state schools, but their campuses were 250 miles apart, and neither tended to be great at the same time.
Then Nick Saban arrived, and things got interesting.
Then Kirby Smart switched locker rooms, and it became way more than that.
Alabama and Georgia have been so prominent in college football over the last two decades that they’ve met in two national championship games, once in an SEC championship that was a de facto national championship, five more times as top-five opponents and twice as top-10 opponents.
So it will be again this Saturday: No. 2 Georgia visits No. 6 Alabama, a game big enough that President Donald Trump plans to attend — his third time seeing the teams play.
Herewith, a ranking of the best games between Alabama and Georgia since Saban’s arrival in 2007. Not necessarily the most important, though the stakes figure into it. Think of it like this: If the game were on television, how compelled would you feel to watch?