Up until 2014, the Georgia Bulldogs regular meeting against the Clemson Tigers was a big deal. The game was a border state rivalry with the two schools being relatively close in distance. Going back to 1897, the rivalry was deep with several hometown players having known the players on the other side of the ball.
Now, due to a laundry list of reasons, that historic rivalry seems to officially be ending.
Clemson-Georgia becoming a Thing of the Past
Historically, the College Football Playoff does not value out-of-conference opponents like it should. Instead, they tend to put higher value on the "eye test", or on overall record instead of strength of schedule.
Since teams like Texas this past year have been left out the playoff for losing big non-conference games lik they did against Ohio State, programs have become more weary of scheduling these competitive games.
For SEC schools in particular, it is hard to imagine why they would want to schedule one of these challenging games. The conference is adding an additional conference game to every school starting in 2026, meaning that nice out of the 12 games each school in the conference plays in the regular season would be a conference opponent. A tough ask considering how tough the SEC is. With this in mind, teams have started rapidly canceling home-and-home series.
For a while, Georgia did not. Instead, they kept the games in place and looked to be in good shape. However, with the University just recently cancelling their series against Florida State, it looks less likely that they will rekindle the Clemson rivalry.
The rivalry had already started to die out after 2014, but was looking like it could be making a comeback after they played each other in 2021 and 2023, with a great game being played specificaly in 2021. Sadly, it does not look like this will be an regular matchup again for a long time.
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