Advice to the Tide from an amateur Saban: Stack the line against Nick Chubb and make Lambert beat you with his arm. Georgia is going to pull both Kublanow and Pyke out to the strong-side, and the down lineman are going to block for a power sweep with Chubb. The fact is, for a program that enters nearly every season with a "championship or bust" mentality, the month of September has been a minefield. Georgie is a flawless 4-0 on the season with wins over Southern, South Carolina, Vanderbilt and ULM. The same can't be said for the Tide's quarterbacks, who have combined to throw six interceptions through four games.

Those twin droughts lend a unique urgency to every new opportunity the Bulldogs have to bring them to an end.

Besides Tuscaloosa and Athens, the series has been hosted in Columbus, GA, Montgomery, AL and Atlanta, GA, with numerous Alabama home games being played in Birmingham at Legion Field. Rob Sale (offensive line), Kevin Sherrer (linebackers) and Mark Hocke (strength and conditioning) are former Tide assistants, as well. "So at the same time, you have to still be down to earth with where you're at". And that's exactly what makes this game so important. This is essentially a must-win game if the Tide want to remain in the national championship picture. Last year's squad had absolutely no business winning the SEC with all of its issues re: health, QB questions, defensive losses, etc. I don't know a person on this earth who wasn't giddy after winning the SEC.

And though the drought may be mostly a product of happenstance, it is also true that Georgia's almost endless supply of natural resources has been counterbalanced by an institutional ethos that makes it harder for the school to be a year-in, year-out superpower in the hyper-competitive SEC. His teams won't be mistaken for a Bret Bielema-coached team by any stretch, but he's also not trying to deploy all kinds of HUNH spread tactics either.

But then something incredible happened: Oddly, the best manager of fan expectations since has not been Saban, it has certainly not been introspection, nor even an objective look at the team relative to its schedule...it's been Ms. Terry - Nick's wife. The crush is expected to be so big the school has urged anyone without a ticket for the Alabama game to stay away from the campus. This should be obvious to everyone since he went on to become a quarterback at Auburn where he... did not win a national title. Hm.

For the first half of Richt's tenure, it felt inevitable that one of his teams would eventually deliver on the inherent potential that Goff and Donnan had squandered throughout the '90s. It's a Hoosier thing as Ohio State opens Big Ten play at Indiana. Total: Alabama 15, Georgia 2 Conference Titles The Crimson Tide have won a whopping 28 conference titles, including 24 in the SEC. The Tide won the last meeting in Athens in 2008 - the infamous "Blackout Game" - by jumping out to a 31-0 halftime lead. Both teams need this one in a big way.

UGA and the Bulldog Nation, as it were, just hasn't been able to stand up to these moments, they're saying. The reaction to the Auburn loss, a loss aided by poor Alabama coaching by the way, led as much to the Texas back-channeling as anything. This is the game of the week in college football and will determine if the injury bug has caught up to the Irish or if they are a legitimate college football playoff contender.

It's been 6 years, 72 games to be exact, since the Alabama Crimson Tide have been underdogs in a college football game.

Jake Coker is still a work in progress at No. 13 Alabama. In the SEC, his production is lagging far behind that of Fournette and Chubb.