EDITOR’S NOTE: Every day until Aug. 29, Creg Stephenson is counting down significant numbers in Alabama football history, both in the lead-up to the 2025 football season and in commemoration of the Crimson Tide’s first national championship 100 years ago. The number could be attached to a year, a uniform number or even a football-specific statistic. We hope you enjoy.

One of the drawbacks of SEC expansion and resulting schedule rotation is that Alabama very rarely plays at Georgia.

The Crimson Tide and Bulldogs have met three times in the SEC championship game, twice in the College Football Playoff National Championship Game and twice in Tuscaloosa since the last time they played “Between the Hedges” at Sanford Stadium in Athens, in 2015. That was so long ago, Kirby Smart — who is entering his 10th season as Georgia’s head coach — was still Alabama’s defensive coordinator at the time.

Kalen DeBoer was offensive coordinator at Eastern Michigan back then; he’s had five jobs since. Alabama superstar Ryan Williams — entering his sophomore season — was eight years old.

Since the SEC first expanded in 1992, Alabama has played at Sanford Stadium just four times — in 1995, 2003, 2008 and 2015. The Crimson Tide has won three of those games, all of them convincingly.

That trip to Athens on Oct. 3, 2015, was certainly a memorable one for the Crimson Tide and a forgettable one for the Bulldogs. Nick Saban and Alabama hammered Georgia 38-10 on a rain-soaked afternoon in Athens, sparking a national championship run and sending Bulldogs head coach Mark Richt down the road to being fired at season’s end.

Georgia came in at 4-0 and ranked No. 8 nationally. Alabama was 3-1 and ranked No. 13, having lost at home to Ole Miss two weeks prior.

The Bulldogs were a slight betting favorite by the kickoff, making the Crimson Tide a rare underdog. It was the only time between 2009 and 2021 that Alabama was not the oddsmakers’ pick to win.

As with the 2009 and 2021 SEC championship games, Vegas got this one wrong as well. Alabama jumped out to a 24-3 halftime lead, and was up by 35 points five minutes into the second half.

“I told (Alabama’s players) before the game that the plan we had for them, ordinary men couldn’t go out there and get it done,” Saban said. “We needed them to be extraordinary.”

After a slow start, they certainly were.

The game was tied 3-3 heading toward the midway point of the second quarter before Alabama made a series of big plays on offense, defense and special teams. First was a 30-yard touchdown run by Derrick Henry, which put the Crimson Tide up 10-3 with 8:26 to play before halftime.

Georgia lined up to punt from its own 16 with 4:48 left in the half, but Alabama freshman Minkah Fitzpatrick burst through the line and blocked the kick, then scooped it up at the 1-yard and bounded into the end zone for a 17-3 lead. After the Bulldogs went three-and-out and punted again, the Crimson Tide scored on the next play — a 45-yard pass from Jake Coker to Calvin Ridley, which made it 24-3.

The game was essentially over at that point, but Alabama wasn’t done scoring. On Georgia’s first series of the second half, Crimson Tide safety Eddie Jackson picked off a Brice Ramsey pass and returned it 50 yards for a touchdown.

The next Georgia possession resulted in a punt, which gave Alabama the ball on the Bulldogs’ 38 after a personal foul penalty. Coker threw 23 yards to ArDarius Stewart on first down, and scored on a 2-yard keeper three plays later to make it 38-3.

Georgia finally got into the end zone on the last play of the third quarter, with Nick Chubb breaking away for an 83-yard touchdown run against mostly Alabama reserves. The fourth quarter was scoreless, a 15-minute countdown to finish off yet another beatdown of the Bulldogs in Athens by the Crimson Tide.

It was a thorough pounding reminiscent of the one seven years earlier in Athens, when Georgia used a “blackout” promotion for a Saturday night game vs. Alabama and found itself down 31-0 at halftime on the way to a 41-30 loss. That victory helped usher in the Saban era for the Crimson Tide, but the 2015 rout — the “black and blue” game? — only continued the greatest run of sustained excellence in modern college football history.

The win over Georgia was the second of 12 consecutive victories for Alabama to end the 2015 season. Alabama scored double-digit wins over Auburn to end the regular season and Florida in the SEC championship game, then throttled Michigan State in the Cotton Bowl CFP semifinal before outlasting Clemson 45-40 to win the fourth of six national championships under Saban.

Thankfully, Alabama finally plays at Georgia again this season. The Crimson Tide and Bulldogs face off on Sept. 27 at Sanford Stadium, in a night game to be televised by ABC.

It should be a phenomenal atmosphere, and possibly a great game. It should just happen more often.

Coming Thursday: Our countdown to kickoff continues with No. 37, arguably the greatest SEC football player of the pre-World War II era.