By: Colin Lacy

TheSouthernSportsEdition.com news services

Boot meets ball and we’ve got Football in 2024!

While I know college football officially began last week with Week Zero, we have our first full weekend of football coming this weekend and the first marquee game kicks off at Noon with the Aflac Kickoff game between Clemson and Georgia.

The Bulldogs come into the match-up a consensus number 1 team while Dabo Swinney’s Tigers come in as the 14^th best ranked squad.

This SEC vs ACC clash is the 65^th meeting all time between the two, and a rematch of the 2021 Kickoff game in Charlotte where the Bulldogs won 10-3. That 2021 match-up was the last meeting between the two, and the only touchdown scored in the game was a pick-six by Georgia’s Chris Smith taking a (now former Tiger) DJ Uiagalelei pass back 74 yards to the house in the second quarter to start the scoring.

This game away from Memorial Stadium marks the 5^th straight season that Clemson will open the year away from the friendly confines of Death Valley.

The Tigers look to build off the success they had in the back half of 2023. After starting the season 4-4, Clemson finished up the 9-4 slate by winning the final five games of the year.

On the flip side, Georgia has become accustomed to playing inside Mercedes Benz Stadium after having played at least one game inside “the Benz” each of the last eight seasons.

That being said, the Dawgs are looking to get the sour taste out of their mouths from the last contest in Atlanta with the loss in the SEC Championship game last season to Alabama 27-24. While the loss to Alabama still sticks in the crawl of Dawg fans, the loss in the SEC Title game was the only loss in the last 30 contests.

The quarterback match-up is one of experienced signal callers. Georgia’s QB1 Carson Beck ranked third in all the FBS with 3,941 passing yards and was a Manning Award finalist a year ago.

Beck is going to be protected by familiar faces with four returning starting linemen with LT Earnest Greene III, LG, Dylan Fairchild, RG Tate Ratledge and RT Xavier Truss. That combination helped lead the Georgia offense to a school record 7.26 yards per play and leading the country on third down by converting on over 55% of the time.

For the Clemson Tigers, Cade Klubnik already made a name for himself last season already ranking in the top 15 in Clemson history in career passing touchdowns and collected three contests of over 300 yards passing, which is good for 6^th best in Clemson lore.

This match-up is the only meeting between two AP Top 15 teams this weekend and clashes two legendary head coaches. Dabo Swinney and Kirby Smart are two of only three active head coaches to have won an FBS National Championship (along with North Carolina’s Mack Brown).

Obviously, Georgia is the favorite in the game, and casual fans have overlooked the Clemson squad for the last year plus, I think Clemson makes this more of a game than many believe.

Clemson hasn’t utilized the transfer portal much, but honestly didn’t need to this year with fourteen returning starters from a year ago from a team that arguably had the most momentum in college football down the back stretch.

So, on Saturday, after a morning of College Game Day, it will lead you to the ABC kickoff in Atlanta for the first major matchup of the season. The Dawgs and the Tigers to kick off your Week 1!