Georgia and Oklahoma have met twice, eight years apart

A first date in Pasadena

The programs met for the first time in the College Football Playoff semifinal at the Rose Bowl on January 1, 2018. Oklahoma led 31-14 with six seconds left in the first half. Georgia won 54-48 in double overtime after Lorenzo Carter blocked a field goal and Sony Michel ran 27 yards for the final touchdown. It was the first Rose Bowl ever to go to overtime and, at 102 combined points, the highest-scoring one.

That game deserves its own telling, and our companion piece walks through it. What matters here is the aftermath. A classic like that usually creates demand for a rematch, and within 16 months both schools had signed one.

The home-and-home that stayed on paper

On May 6, 2019, Georgia and Oklahoma announced a non-conference series: Norman on September 9, 2023, and Athens on September 13, 2031. Kirby Smart framed it as a sequel to Pasadena.

Neither date survived. Oklahoma and Texas officially joined the Southeastern Conference on July 1, 2024, and Oklahoma's notes say plainly that with the move coming, the series was eventually canceled. Playing a conference rival twice, once as a non-conference guest, would have made little sense.

Then came a quieter wait. Joining the same league did not put them on the same field right away. Georgia's own 2025 schedule announcement noted that 2026 would be the first time the Bulldogs faced Oklahoma since the Sooners arrived.

Why the SEC finally paired them

The league adopted a nine-game conference schedule beginning in 2026. Each school keeps three annual opponents and rotates through six others, and ESPN's reporting on the format says every team plays every league opponent at least once every two years and visits every venue over a four-year span.

Georgia's annual opponents are Auburn, Florida and South Carolina. Oklahoma's are Missouri, Ole Miss and Texas. The two lists do not overlap, so this is a rotating matchup rather than a protected rivalry. Georgia's published 2026-29 slate puts Oklahoma in Athens in 2026 and Georgia at Oklahoma in 2028, with no meeting in 2027 or 2029.

My read: that is the right pace for now. A rivalry needs either geography or grievance, and this series has one great story and a lot of mutual respect. Every other year gives it room to grow a second story before anyone brands it a rivalry.

Oklahoma's first trip to Athens

The 2026 game was the first between these programs on either campus. Oklahoma's notes add a stranger fact: it was only the Sooners' second game ever in the state of Georgia. The other was a Peach Bowl playoff semifinal against LSU after the 2019 season, which Oklahoma lost.

Here is the detail I enjoyed most. Before this season, Georgia was one of just three SEC schools where Oklahoma had never played a football game. The other two were Florida and Mississippi State. Oklahoma's 2026 schedule sends it to Athens on September 26, Starkville on October 24 and Gainesville on November 7. If that calendar holds, one season clears the entire list, which is the kind of tidy accident a completionist would frame.

Two games that could not look less alike

Georgia won the Athens meeting 41-13 before a sellout crowd of 93,033, according to Georgia's recap. The Bulldogs forced four turnovers, including an 85-yard fumble return for a touchdown by linebacker Chris Cole, and held Oklahoma to 65 rushing yards on 35 carries. Pasadena was a shootout. Athens was a defensive grind.

Then the numbers started rhyming. Georgia scored 54 points in the Rose Bowl, and the two teams combined for exactly 54 in Athens. Better still, Georgia kicker Peyton Woodring's fourth-quarter extra point was his 201st in a row, a Georgia and SEC record that broke the old mark held by Rodrigo Blankenship. Blankenship, the bespectacled former walk-on, is the same man who hit a 55-yard field goal at the end of the first half in that 2018 Rose Bowl. Two games, eight years apart, and one kicker's name runs through both.

Two giants on the same page

The same notes rank Georgia (274) and Oklahoma (273) third and fourth nationally in wins since the start of the 2000 season. Georgia's recap calls them two of the nine programs with more than 900 all-time wins. For two schools that close in stature, a 2-0 series is a remarkably thin file.

What comes next

The next scheduled meeting is in Norman in 2028, which would be Georgia's first game there. The SEC has not, as far as I could find, published the date. The league also plans to reevaluate annual opponents every four years, so anything after 2029 is unknown and I would not trust anyone who claims otherwise.

For now the series is two games old and already has a private joke. Whatever else happens when these teams meet, the number 54 seems to show up.