Thoughts of the Day: October 27, 2026

Photo: Florida coach Jon Sumrall on the field before the Gators' Sept. 26, 2026, game against Ole Miss at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium. File photo by Chris Spears, GatorBait Media.

"I think anybody that says it's just another game doesn't have a real good pulse of what reality is in college football or to our fan base."

Jon Sumrall said that Monday at his press conference at the Heavener Football Center in Gainesville, a combination of excitement and reverence showing on his face and in his demeanor. Saturday at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta (3:30 p.m., ABC) will be his first Florida-Georgia game. The fact that the game will be played somewhere other than Jacksonville, the long-standing traditional home of the rivalry game does nothing to dampen his enthusiasm or his understanding of what winning this game means.

It is more, much more, than border state bragging rights and the importance goes far beyond two ranked teams squaring off, both of them very much in the hunt for a second trip to Atlanta this season for the SEC Championship Game and beyond that, the College Football Playoff. For the 17th-ranked Gators (5-2, 3-2 SEC), a loss would jeopardize their chances of making the SEC Championship Game for the first time since 2020 and reaching the College Football Playoff for the first time. The four-team playoff introduced in 2014 expanded to 12 teams in 2024. For No. 3 Georgia (6-1, 4-1 SEC), it is a matter of keeping up with the SEC Joneses, in this case the rather surprising Kentucky Wildcats (7-1, 5-1 SEC). Since 2011 Georgia has played for the SEC championship 10 times, winning four, all of them since Kirby Smart became the head coach. The Bulldogs broke a 41-year national championship drought in 2021 and repeated in 2022.

How the rivalry changed

There was a time when the roles were reversed and Florida was the dominant team. Steve Spurrier went 11-1 against Georgia, won six SEC championships and the 1996 national title. Ron Zook won two out of three and might have had a perfect record against the Bulldogs except he was fired on the Monday before the 2004 Florida-Georgia game. Urban Meyer was 5-1 against Georgia, winning both SEC and national championships in 2006 and 2008.

Since Florida's 21-year dominance that began in Spurrier's first year on the job in 1990, the Gators have been a revolving door of coaches. Sumrall, in his first year on the job, is the fifth head coach since Meyer took a hiatus after the 2010 season. Georgia, meanwhile, has been the picture of stability. Mark Richt took over the Georgia program from Jim Donnan in 2001, and won two SEC championships in 15 years, going 5-10 against the Gators. Richt was fired and Georgia native son Kirby Smart took over the program in 2016. Since then Georgia is 123-22. In his 11th season on the job, Smart is 8-2 against the Gators, losing only the 2016 and 2020 games.

What Georgia has going for it is momentum, which only adds to the history and significance of Florida-Georgia. For Florida fans who remember the good old days from 1990-2010, what Georgia has done under Kirby Smart is a painful reminder of what happens when there is a confluence of good coaching, exceptional recruiting and stability at the top.

Georgia has it. It is Sumrall's job to restore some sanity (that's from the Florida perspective) to the rivalry. More than half the players who will suit up for Florida Saturday have never played in this game. They came to Florida from the transfer portal or as wide-eyed freshmen. Georgia's program under Smart has grown to a point of using the portal only to add a few impact players each year. Nearly the entire roster is home grown.

"Georgia the way they've done it and the way they've got it built now, they don't go out and just go to the portal to get a third-string guy," Sumrall said, adding "Most of their roster is because they've done a good job of layering. Our roster, there's a lot of guys playing Saturday, I'm teaching them what this game needs to mean to us. And we haven't had a recent history of the success we need to have in this rivalry to make it as competitive as it should be."

To put that in perspective, Georgia has won five consecutive games against Florida. The Gators last beat the Bulldogs in 2020.

Sumrall spent the bye week balancing the history and traditions that have always made this one of the great rivalry games in the country with what has to happen for the Gators to get their third win over a top-ten ranked team this season. Georgia enters as the higher-ranked team.

"First, you want to make sure they understand it is a rivalry game," Sumrall said. "They need to have awareness of that. And then you have to bring it back to, while there's all this heightened publicity around the game, it's still a football game and what wins football games. So you have to lean on both. You can't just be all hype about highlight videos and the history of the game, without, hey, here are the plays we're gonna run, here's how we're gonna block them, here's the progression of the quarterback, here's where we're trying to tackle him, here's what we're trying to do on defense to slow them down. That's the stuff that really matters. But I do think the guys need to understand that the game has, it counts for one game on your record, but it has a different feel."

A different feel, yes, when the Florida discussion has everything to do with traditions and the recent history of the game that highly favors Georgia. Smart, who was on the losing side in Athens the last time Florida-Georgia had to take a vacation from Jacksonville due to stadium issues, can speak to his team from a personal perspective. He was on the field when Eric Kresser threw a touchdown pass to Travis McGriff to finish off the Gators' 52-17 win over Georgia in 1995, the first time an opposing team had ever hung 50 or more on the Bulldogs at Sanford Stadium. He was also on the only Georgia team that beat Spurrier in 1997.

Building a roster for the rivalry

And now, Smart is the driving force for an era of Georgia dominance. For Sumrall to change the momentum of the rivalry, he has to build a roster that is Georgia-like in that it is mostly home grown and stacked with talent so that when one player goes down due to injury a player of equal or greater talent is next man up. When a Georgia player leaves for the NFL as so many do, Smart cherry picks from the portal.

"I actually studied their roster some during the bye week because I do think they've been really consistent," Sumrall said. "And when you look through our personnel reports that we do on each team as we get ready to go into a game week, it tells us previous school – whether you know high school, college slash high school. These guys have a lot of guys' previous school from a college standpoint, it was Georgia. So I think as you get to the model, like year one of our program, a lot of our guys on their previous school it says somewhere other than Florida.

"We retained a good number of players: roughly half our roster were here last year, but the other half was not. So half of our roster says the high school they just came from, or a different school and so I think as you build, and like I said earlier, they're in year 11, we're in year one. As you build in year four, five, six, seven, whatever, you start to move forward. In a perfect world in the portal year and year out, you're adding six to 10 difference makers. In some years, it might be five or might be 12, so I'm not locking myself into like, hey, we're only adding six to 10 every year. Some years it might be five. Some years it might have to be 12 or 13. It better never again be high 20s, 30s, or we got a real problem. So as you build your roster, you want to add portal pieces that are like frontline starters when you have immediate glaring needs and holes. This past year, we had to go out and get guys out of the portal just to be able to field a football team that could practice. Never again will that be the case here, I hope."

It shouldn't be lost on anyone that Florida comes into this game with the momentum of a 27-24 win over Texas, which just two weeks before had been ranked No. 1. Georgia spent a week at the top following the Texas loss to Oklahoma that knocked the Longhorns out of the top spot, but in their first game after ascending to No. 1, the Bulldogs were stunned by unranked Auburn, 27-24. Yes, the same team that Florida beat 44-39 in Auburn whacked Georgia in Athens.

With a win, Florida keeps hope alive. With a loss, Georgia is still very much in the hunt for the SEC Championship Game and the playoff.

So, much is at stake Saturday, which is the way it should be. Great rivalry games deserve far reaching consequences and Florida-Georgia has them. By no means is this just another game.