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By W. Michael Lawson, [email protected]

You couldn’t erase the past. You couldn’t even change it. But sometimes life offered you the opportunity to put it right. – Ann Brashares

Wanting a “do-over” is a part of human nature. In golf, you have the friendly mulligan off the first hole. In film, there are ubiquitous stories about going into the past to fix the present and future, i.e. “Back to the Future”, “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure”, and “12 Monkeys”. In song, Cher whined and screeched her way through “If I Could Turn Back Time”. It’s a universal theme, and if you were a Georgia Bulldog fan in the 1990s, you couldn’t imagine a chance to undo the damage done by the Tennessee Volunteers. Yet, in September in the Year of our Lord 2025, the Georgia Bulldogs did just that and rewrote history.

For those old enough to remember, Gen X and older, our beloved Georgia Bulldogs didn’t play Tennessee every year. Growing up, they were that odd-ball quasi-mountain cousin to the north that had an astro-turf field, a checkerboard end zone, and fans who literally wore Davey Crocket coonskin hats to football games. I, actually, didn’t mind the Tennessee football team. The series was always competitive and pretty even and was always one of streaks. But Dawgs fans never saw them as a threat, necessarily. In fact, I had never experienced Georgia losing to Tennessee. Going into the 1989 season, UGA had won the last four (’73, ’80, ’81, ’88) and led the all-time series (10-8-2). But then something shifted, and a Rocky Top torment began.

In 1992, the SEC added two teams (Carolina and Arkansas), and to accommodate the schedule, divided into divisions for the first time in conference history. That meant that Georgia and Tennessee would begin playing every year, much like the Auburn and Florida rivalries. And from this fan’s perspective, it was a nightmare. The Vols ripped off nine straight wins in a row from 1992 to 1999 (including the 1989 win). Part of this fan’s nightmare was due to the fact that I left South Georgia and moved to Tennessee for undergrad during this time. Trust me when I say, I would have rather fought Freddie Krueger in my dreams than the affliction of having to listen to my friends Doc or Matt or Josh after another Bulldog loss to Tennessee. It was brutal. It was an existential crisis that would never be undone or repaired. The all-time series was now topsy-turvy and askew with the Vols leading (17-10-2). Vecna from Stranger Things was more pleasant company. Georgia fans were trapped in an eternal upside-down from which there was no return. It was a darkness that had no end. It was a desperate, soulless void. In short, it sucked.

Coaches Jim Donnan and Mark Richt found a way to stop the vile “Big Orange” streak and be competitive in the series again, even winning five straight from 2010 to 2014, but the overall record was too lopsided to imagine a correction. Then enters the greatest Georgia Bulldog of all-time: Coach Kirby Smart of Bainbridge, Georgia.

In 2016, Coach Smart, in his first year as Head Coach, almost pulled off a last-minute comeback for the ages against Tennessee. However, the “Dobbs Nail Boot”, as Vols fans call it (as a retort to our 2001 “Hobnail Boot” game) was a last-second “hail mary” that ended in agony for Dawg Nation. We changed coaches, but the heartbreak persisted like a 1990s R&B ballad. Salvation was like sand in the wind…fleeting, temporary, unpredictable, and unstable. The Vols led the all-time series (23-21-2).

Coach Smart and his Junkyard Dawgs were just beginning, though, and with the win Saturday, have ripped off a nine-win streak of their own. Beginning in the 2017 season, the Smart-led Dawgs from Athens have done something that very few of us will ever be able to do: Erase history. Change history. Make history.

There is no way to overestimate the psychological and cultural football shift that this current win streak means for the Georgia and Tennessee football programs, respectively. Tennessee fans will tell you right now that their program is a “better” program historically and that they have more “tradition”. They will point you to some phantom national championships and then murmur something about being second to only Alabama in SEC Championships. But the record books tell a different story.

The improbable (44-41) UGA comeback Saturday is just the latest installment in what has been a nine-year woodshed session in this series. To be sure, the Tennessee Vols football program is a storied program, and the fans should be proud. They whipped us in the 90s, but that was then and this is now.

Make no mistake about it: The Georgia Bulldogs own the Tennessee Vols. The current all-time series is (30-23-2). Georgia has won 14 of the last 16 in the series, and they have more SEC Championships. Game Blouses.

Moving forward, with the removal of conference divisions and the implementation of a nine-game SEC schedule, the days of Tennessee and Georgia playing every year are probably over. Most likely, the next time they will play will be in 2028 or 2029. So, like an expensive wine, or a gaseous malevolent smell in an elevator, this one will linger for a while.

Time will tell what Kirby Smart’s ultimate story as Head Coach of our Georgia Bulldogs will be. But you are what your record says you are. And as of right now, in the Year of our Lord 2025, he has planted his Georgia Bulldog flag on Rocky Top and done something unthinkable just a decade ago: He changed history and turned back time.

Mr. Lawson returned home to “The Good Life City” in 2023 and is currently Vice President of Commercial Banking at Flint Community Bank. His grandfather loved the Georgia Bulldogs and read the Albany Herald every day of his life. Anything that Mr. Lawson writes is in honor of him.