The 2010 edition of Clean Old-Fashioned Hate is a bit of a minor milestone, but not one you’re going to hear either coach brag much about in any of their press conferences this week. The 11-11 combined record of the two teams is their worst since November 30, 1996, when the Dawgs and Jackets trudged into Sanford Stadium a combined 9-11 (and both trudged out with losing records).
Georgia was in its first season under head coach Jim Donnan, and it had been a rocky start. Georgia lost its first two games (Southern Miss at home, South Carolina on the road) before notching a 3-point win against Texas Tech in a raging downpour in Athens; they whupped Mississippi State and outlasted a ranked Auburn team through four overtimes to win a classic, but also got punked on the road at Kentucky and got blown off the field in Jacksonville by a Florida squad that would go on to win the national title.
Tech, meanwhile, had gotten off to a promising 5-2 start in George O’Leary’s second full season as head coach on the Flats, but suffered a 49-3 implosion against Florida State (whom Florida would beat in the national title game, incidentally) on November 2 and didn’t taste victory again for the rest of the season.
The Jackets scored first in that year’s game in Athens on a 72-yard Nathan Perryman punt return, but that was about the most notable thing a GT player would accomplish that evening; future Heisman finalist Joe Hamilton, then a freshman, was 3-of-9 for just 35 yards and a pick. Georgia was hardly an offensive juggernaut themselves, of course, but future offensive coordinator Mike Bobo capped off an efficient day with a 47-yard TD pass to Juan Daniels that effectively put the game (and bowl eligibility) out of reach for the Jackets.
What else was going on in the world? Bill Clinton was just a few weeks removed from a convincing re-election victory over Sen. Bob Dole; BLACKstreet’s “No Diggity” was Billboard’s #1 single, and Disney’s live-action remake of “101 Dalmatians” was tops at the box office that weekend; Las Vegas’ Sands Hotel was imploded to make way for the Venetian; and the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 6,521.70 the previous day after nearly an entire month of consistent gains. So, hey, not everything was terrible.