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Ahead of Oklahoma Showdown Georgia Football Says There is "Something Different" About Playing for UGA

Saturday’s matchup with the Sooners is the first regular season fight between the two schools in history.
Dean Legge|
Georgia football QB Gunner Stockton runs against Arkansas.
Georgia football QB Gunner Stockton runs against Arkansas. | IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect

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Georgia Bulldogs

ATHENS - Georgia football used the voice of former RB Sony Michel to narrate the Bulldogs hype film before the show down Between the Hedges with Oklahoma.

Michel scored the winning touchdown to win an overtime thriller against the Sooners in the 2018 Rose Bowl Game in Pasadena. The win over Oklahoma advanced Georgia to its first College Football Playoff National Championship Game ever.

“When you commit to play for the University of Georgia you know exactly what you are signing up for. Because here it take more than talent,” Michel said. “There is something different about the guys that play at Georgia. You have to be someone that truly loves the game.”

Saturday’s matchup with the Sooners is the first regular season fight between the two schools in history. The game was set up when Oklahoma moved to the SEC in 2024. Before then the Sooners, like Texas, were in the Big 12.

No. 2 Georgia is a near two-touchdown favorites over Oklahoma. Saturday’s game won’t have close to the stakes that the first meeting between the two schools had at the end of the 2017 season. No. 2 Oklahoma featured Heisman Trophy winner Baker Mayfield. The No. 3 Dawgs featured dual running backs Michel and Nick Chubb. It was UGA coach Kirby Smart’s second season in Athens.

“It got us the national championship,” Smart said when asked about the game on Monday. “Man, that’s a long time ago. I really was not thinking of that game coming in here today because the staffs were almost entirely different. Even ours, for the most part, has changed. I think we got a couple guys left over from that staff. I know they probably don't have any, or if they do, I, I don't know who they were in terms of overlap. It was an iconic game because of what it meant and what it, like what it led to and where it was played. but some great players in the game because you look back at Baker, and he's a good friend of mine now, and, and then Nick (Chubb) and Sony (Michel) being a part of it, so it was a great game.”

The Bulldogs lost to No. 4 Alabama in the CFP National Championship Game. Georgia got revenge on the Tide in 2021 - beating them 33-18 in that year’s CFP National Championship Game.

Michal went on to be drafted No. 31 overall by New England. He won Super Bowl LIII with the Patriots and Super Bowl LVI with Matthew Stafford and the Los Angeles Rams.

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Dean Legge
DEAN LEGGE

After two-plus decades of covering the Georgia Bulldogs and the SEC, Dean Legge is one of the definitive voices in Athens and beyond. Legge has authored two books - DAWGSTRUCTION and DOUBLE DAWGS - with each chronicling Kirby Smart and the Bulldogs' run to national titles in 2021 and 2022. Legge has been a Heisman Trophy voter since 2005 and a Biletnikoff Award voter since 2009. He’s covered SEC Championships, Peach Bowls, Orange Bowls, Sugar Bowls, the Rose Bowl Game, College Football Playoff National Championship Games, the NCAA Tournament, the College World Series as well as a slew of college football, basketball and baseball games. Legge graduated from Coker College in 1999 with a degree in Political Science. He played both tennis and basketball for the Cobras. After graduating, Legge completed his academic career at the University of Georgia where he earned a Master of Public Administration from the School of Public and International Affairs in 2001. In 2008, Legge was elected President of the Coker College Alumni Association. He served on the Board of Trustees at Coker from 2009 to 2017 and was a member of the Executive Committee, Student Services and Enrollment Committee and Athletic Committee in that time. Legge is a native of Tucker, Georgia.

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