One of college football’s best games of the 2026 season could be Sanford Stadium’s SEC opener.
The Oklahoma Sooners will travel to Athens to play the Georgia Bulldogs in Week 4 this season. It’ll be Georgia’s first SEC home game and first time playing Oklahoma since it joined the conference.
The game will also be Georgia and Oklahoma’s second-ever football matchup with the first one of course being the Bulldogs’ epic 54-48 win over the Sooners in the 2018 Rose Bowl that served as the College Football Playoff semifinal.
That win came in Smart’s second season coaching the Bulldogs. Since then, he’s won two National Championships at his alma mater and is now the longest tenured head football coach in the SEC.
He’s earned the reputation of the conference’s best coach and has made Georgia the SEC’s premier program, something Sooners head coach Brent Venables readily acknowledged at SEC Media Days.
You’re not going to sneak up on anybody in Ann Arbor or going to Athens, Georgia,” Venables said via ugawire.usatoday.com. “I think they’ve lost maybe once in five or six years at home. Georgia has been the gold standard in my opinion for college football for quite some time now.”
Bret Venables will be ready for the immense challenge of playing at Georgia
Both Venables and Smart made their name as excellent defensive minds who coordinated some of the nation’s best defenses – Venables at Dabo Swinney’s Clemson program from 2012 to 2021 and Smart at Nick Saban’s Alabama from 2008 to 2015.
In his tenure at Oklahoma, Venables has transformed the program’s identity from a high-flying, offensive-oriented team to a hard-nosed defensive team more suited for life in the SEC.
Smart praised Venables and the job he does defensively when asked about defensive back Gentry Williams, who transferred from Oklahoma to Georgia this offseason.
Williams’ career has been afflicted with injuries. He only appeared in four games last season due to a shoulder injury, played in just two the year before and six as a freshman.
He’s been a good player when healthy, though and recorded three interceptions as a sophomore in 10 games in 2023. If he can stay on the field, he’s in the mix for Georgia’s No. 2 cornerback job along with Demello Jones and fellow transfer Braylon Conley.
Oklahoma is coming off a 10-3 season where it hosted Alabama in the first round of the Playoff but squandered a 17-0 lead in the defeat. The Sooners started 5-0 and were ranked as high as No. 5, but the offense never looked the same after quarterback John Mateer suffered an injury to his throwing hand in the team’s Week 4 game against Auburn.
Mateer’s play dropped off significantly from the Heisman Trophy hype he was getting in September, but the word now is that he’s back to full strength.
Oklahoma is a dark horse candidate to make a run at an SEC title this season and try to unseat the Bulldogs. The Sooners were predicted to finish seventh in the conference by the SEC preseason media poll.
Both teams adopted “hard to kill” as a slogan during the 2025 season and figure to bring a similar attitude with them to 2026. It’s shaping up to be an awesome late-September showdown between the hedges.
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