The history of Georgia football's rivalry with Clemson ahead of the Week 1
By Josh Yourish
As if Georgia’s 2024 SEC schedule wasn’t hard enough, the Bulldogs open the year with a neutral site game at Mercedes-Benz Stadium against the No. 14 Clemson Tigers. Kirby Smart and Dabo Swinney are two of just three active college football head coaches with national championships on their resume, both with two. However, the history of this non-conference rivalry runs much deeper than just the current head coaches battling for supremacy in a post-Nick Saban landscape.
This year’s Week 1 matchup will be the 66th meeting between the two programs that are just an hour and a half apart, across the Georgia/South Carolina border. Despite only sharing a conference for a brief time, Clemson is Georgia’s eighth most common opponent in program history with only eight fewer meetings than Alabama. Georgia leads the all-time series 43-18-4, and as the No. 1 team in the country, the Bulldogs are favored by two touchdowns.
From 1921-1932, Clemson and Georgia both played in the Southern Conference, but neither team won a conference title through those seasons and the two programs only played three times, in 1921, 1927, and 1932, all Georgia victories. Prior to sharing a conference, they had played 21 times with Georgia winning 11, Clemson taking nine wins, and two matchups ending in ties.
Playing 24 times between 1962 and 1987, the rivalry began to lose steam in the 1990s and the two programs have only played five times this century with the most recent coming on September 9, 2021, a 10-3 Georgia win.
In that 2021 Week 1 contest, JT Daniels, then the starting quarterback over Stetson Bennett, went 22-30 for 135 yards and one interception. The game’s lone touchdown came in the second quarter when Georgia defensive back Chris Smith II jumped a short route over the middle of the field, intercepted D.J. Uiagalelei’s pass, and returned it for a score. Georgia’s defense held strong, as it would for the rest of the season as the Bulldogs went on to win the national title with a 14-1 season while Clemson went 10-3.
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