College football fans love history. Or at least they pretend to love history whenever someone pulls out a dusty fact that sounds impressive enough to tweet.
So here’s one for the group chat — the last time Alabama and Georgia played in three straight regular seasons, televisions still had antennas and the Beatles were still touring.
Yes, the answer is 1963, 1964, and 1965. A simpler time, when America didn’t require 14 playoff models to decide who was good and SEC scheduling didn’t resemble a Rubik’s Cube.
Alabama beat Georgia in the first two matchups before Georgia stole the 1965 game by a single point, 18–17, in Athens. It was a nice little run. Then both teams seemingly entered a long-term scheduling witness protection program.
A lot of that had to do with Crimson Tide coach Bear Bryant getting so pissed off over a story in the Saturday Evening Post by Furman Bisher in Atlanta, ol’ Bear sued just about everybody except Uga … and won. He flat refused to play them until 1979,
That’s what makes this current streak feel so odd. In an age when Alabama and Georgia meet every time the SEC Championship organizers feel nostalgic, the regular season has been shockingly selective.
These two spend more time meeting in Atlanta than at one another’s stadiums, which says something about both their success and the conference’s knack for manufactured drama.
But here we are: Alabama won in Tuscaloosa in 2024, Alabama won again in Athens in 2025, and the two are scheduled to clash once more in Tuscaloosa in 2026. Congratulations, everyone. We’ve finally matched a scheduling pattern from a time when gas was 30 cents a gallon.
Just try not to get emotional.
A rivalry built more on championships than calendars
If you’re thinking this seems strange, you’re right. Alabama and Georgia are two of the biggest brands in the sport, yet for decades the SEC treated their regular-season matchups like a rare collectible. They met infrequently, almost as if the conference was rationing the supply.
The one place they did meet often? Atlanta. They faced off in SEC title games in 2012, 2018, 2021, 2023, and 2025. That’s five times the league rolled out the gold carpeting, invited both programs to pose under the big spotlight, and let them decide whose playoff path would remain intact.
But those games don’t count toward the trivia that sparked this whole story. If you want regular-season streaks, the SEC Championship Game is basically a giant asterisk.
And because the SEC used divisional scheduling for decades, Alabama–Georgia became a once-every-few-years perk rather than an annual certainty. You were more likely to see new throwback uniforms than three straight regular-season meetings.
With divisions now gone, the league is rearranging its schedule like someone desperately trying to make room on a cluttered bookshelf. Suddenly, matchups long buried beneath rotation rules are emerging again. Hello, 1960s throwback schedule.
Revisiting the last regular-season three-pack
The 1960s run is almost quaint by modern standards. Alabama won in Athens in 1963. Alabama repeated that in Tuscaloosa in 1964. Then Georgia finally grabbed a one-point win in 1965, the kind of result that today would produce 48 hours of debate shows and three different playoff scenarios.
Back then, it probably got a short newspaper paragraph wedged between bowling scores and farm commodity prices.
And then? Nothing. Not until 2020 did the Tide and Bulldogs even start meeting annually again. The sports world changed six million times between those eras, but apparently the schedule needed this long just to realign itself.
The 2024 and 2025 games swung Alabama’s way again, because some things simply do not change, even if it takes 60 years for the calendar to line up.
Georgia now waits for another shot in 2026, this time at Bryant-Denny, where the Bulldogs have not exactly built a timeshare over the years.
What this modern streak actually means
For one, it proves the SEC’s new scheduling model is capable of breaking old habits. Whether the league intended to resurrect a 1960s trend or simply hit the randomize button, the result is surprisingly historic.
It also highlights how often the rivalry has been defined not by routine, but by rarity. Alabama and Georgia have shaped seasons, championships, and playoff brackets, but not through simple repetition. Instead, they collide at high-stakes moments and then retreat back to their corners.
Now, for once, the schedule is nudging them together like two co-workers who keep getting assigned the same project.
What happens next? Who knows. Maybe the streak stops at three again. Maybe the SEC announces another scheduling rebrand by month’s end. Maybe fans start pretending these games were always annual.
College football rarely gives straight lines or predictable patterns. Even when history repeats itself, it usually needs 60 years to get around to it.
Key takeaways
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Alabama and Georgia last played three straight regular seasons in 1963–65, a streak now finally being repeated.
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Most of their big meetings came in SEC Championship Games, which do not count toward regular-season streaks.
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SEC scheduling changes helped revive a pattern that had vanished from the sport for six decades.
