Georgia is pursuing not only an unprecedented third straight national championship this season, but the Bulldogs are entering some truly rarified air when it comes to winning streaks.

Georgia beat Georgia Tech 31-23 for its 29th straight victory last weekend, setting the record for the longest such streak in SEC history. Should the top-ranked Bulldogs (12-0) beat No. 8 Alabama (11-1) in Saturday’s SEC championship game in Atlanta, they’d become just the eighth major-college football team ever — and just the second in the last 50 years — to win 30 in a row (see chart below).

Oklahoma holds the all-time record with 47 consecutive victories from 1953-57, with Miami getting closest in the last half-century with 34 in a row from 2000-02. The streak has begun to take on a life of its own for the Bulldogs, though the current players say they try not to pay attention to it.

“To be a part of it is huge for me and obviously everyone else on the team I think feels the same way,” quarterback Carson Beck said. “But I don’t think it’s something that we think about ever, to be honest. I think we’ve done a really good job of keeping the main thing the main thing, and focusing on each opponent week-to-week.”

It’s notable that the record Georgia broke was previously held by Alabama, which won 28 straight games from 1978-80 and again from 1991-93. The Crimson Tide is also the last team to beat the Bulldogs, winning 41-24 in the 2021 SEC championship game (though Georgia later beat Alabama 33-18 in the College Football Playoff National Championship Game).

Only a handful of Georgia players on the current team played prominent roles in that loss two years ago, though several Bulldogs still carry vivid memories of that day. One is Sedrick Van Pran, a three-year starter at center.

“I can recall just some of the pain that was in the seniors’ eyes after that game and just how bad they wanted that,” Van Pran said. “So I think it’s definitely something that I still hold dear to my heart, not being able to give those guys the (SEC) championship their senior year.”

Alabama’s second 28-game winning streak has a bit of a caveat, however. It was broken by a 17-17 tie to Tennessee at Birmingham’s Legion Field on Oct. 16, 1993, but the Crimson Tide won two more after that to extend their “unbeaten” streak to 31 games — still the longest in SEC history.

That tie with Tennessee is notable not only as the last tie game in Alabama history (overtime was instituted in 1996), but for the Crimson Tide’s amazing comeback to deadlock the game. Alabama drove 83 yards for Jay Barker’s quarterback-sneak touchdown with 21 seconds left to make it 17-15, then wide receiver David Palmer lined up a quarterback and ran into the end zone for two points.

Tennessee had not beaten Alabama since 1986 at the time, and many on the Volunteers’ side of the field treated the tie as a loss. For the Crimson Tide players, it might as well have been a win, former Alabama safety Chris Donnelly said.

“We’re jumping up and down like we won the game,” said Donnelly, who now operates a successful medical supply company in Birmingham. “It felt like a win for sure. And I remember thinking that I’d hate to be a Tennessee fan walking out of that stadium, because they had to feel like ‘if we’re ever gonna beat them, it’s now. And we didn’t.’ After a while it settled in that we didn’t win the game, but we also knew at the time that a tie wasn’t going to keep us from winning the national championship. We still kind of controlled our own destiny.”

Alabama finally lost three weeks later, falling 17-13 to LSU in Tuscaloosa on Nov. 6, 1993, to end its hopes of a second straight national championship. It was the Crimson Tide’s first home loss since 1990, and the first loss period experienced by several of the team’s players.

Donnelly was a senior in 1993, but had played only two seasons with the Crimson Tide after transferring from Vanderbilt. He said the feeling around the Crimson Tide team after it finally lost was one of absolute shock.

“I hadn’t lost one since I’d been there and we’d been in some really close games and had some opportunities to lose and we just figured out a way to win,” Donnelly said. “That includes Tennessee, the Florida (SEC championship game) in 1992, Mississippi State in 1992. We’d just done that so much that you felt like ‘we’re still figuring out a way to win.’ But then you look up and there’s no time left. So that was a different mindset. It didn’t become reality until you saw the zeroes on the clock.”

Georgia hasn’t experienced that feeling in quite a while, of course, and has rarely played a close game in the last two years. The Bulldogs edged Ohio State 42-41 in the College Football Playoff semifinal game in January, needing the Buckeyes to miss a last-second field goal to win the game.

This season, however, Georgia has played only one game decided by fewer than eight points — a 27-20 victory over Auburn on Sept. 30. And in that game, the Tigers didn’t get the ball across midfield after the Bulldogs took the lead for good with 2:52 remaining.

“It’s never been about a streak or anything like that,” Georgia defensive back Kamari Lassiter said. “It’s always just been about being in the moment, just trying to win that moment. That’s something we pride ourselves on, is just trying to be the best version of ourselves in that moment, trying to win every moment. We believe that if we’re able to win each moment, that good things will happen for us.”

Georgia is about a touchdown favorite to beat Alabama on Saturday and extend its winning streak to 30 games. It’s one the rare times Nick Saban’s team has been an underdog in recent years, and few analysts are picking the Crimson Tide to spring the upset.

But as Donnelly noted, such upsets have happened before. Alabama beat a Miami team that had won 29 straight games 34-13 in the Sugar Bowl at the end of the 1992 season to win the national championship.

“Our goal wasn’t to break Miami’s winning streak games, our goal was to win the national championship,” Donnelly said. “Georgia Tech’s goal was not to break Georgia’s streak; they’re just want to win the game. Same with Alabama this Saturday. So you’re just trying to win the game, not worried about a streak that you didn’t really have anything to do with or start until people start talking about it.

“Then you don’t want to be the one that breaks it or that messes it up. So it’s definitely not something I remember that we talked about, it just kind of happened.”

Longest winning streaks in SEC history

Longest winning streaks in major college football history

Creg Stephenson has worked for AL.com since 2010 and has covered college football for a variety of publications since 1994. Contact him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter at @CregStephenson.