An extremely early preview of Georgia vs Clemson 2021

It’s a steamy August night, and one side of Bank of America stadium’s orange, and the other side’s red.

Georgia’s coming off another year of not winning a National Championship, and Clemson’s just celebrated another one, beating Ohio State in a firecracker of a game.

Now they get together to start the 2021 College Football season. It’s the game that everyone’s been talking about since the National Championship ended in January.

Some might say that the powers-that-be in the SEC should have gotten this game earlier, by giving a ton of money to Clemson to move to the SEC East, and forgetting about Missouri altogether. Still, it didn’t happen, and the rest is history.

Anyway, the present. Both sets of fans, not particularly reeling from losing out on their home openers against Wyoming and San Jose State respectively, are very excited. They’ll been partying here since Thursday. They’ve all paid well over $100 to be at the game, and some have dropped a hell of a lot more than that. As usual, the students are getting screwed for the amount of tickets. The powers-that-be for this game ‘generously’ gave 3,000 tickets for each student section, and those who have tickets are asked to play $50 for them (But hey, they are still important, right?).

But regardless, this one’s going to be special.

We wince a little that this one’s not a home-and-home. We would love to see 2021 in Athens and 2020 in the ‘Other’ Death Valley, but the millionaires came to these two programs’ door, and they welcomed it with open arms.

With Clemson, it’s a game that they can barely afford to lose bearing in mind the continuing weakness of the ACC, while Georgia can actually afford to lose it, bearing in mind the SEC is still absolutely loaded.

They look out onto the green fields at giants of the game. Clemson’s ghosts are for the world to see. Trevor Lawrence has packed off to the San Diego Chargers, and the team’s also said goodbye to Travis Etienne, Amari Rodgers and Justyn Ross. Georgia has said goodbye to a couple of players, but they are perhaps more stacked than their Northern neighbors this time, as Clemson counts the cost of years of great-great teams, and Georgia continues to pile up their embarrassment of riches.

Georgia’s starting redshirt senior Stetson Bennett, and since Zamir White decided to stay, he’s got a Heisman hopeful in his backfield, and isn’t missing the fact that Zach Evans is playing his second year at evil rivals, Florida. Bennett will throw the ball to top receiver Dominick Blaylock to test Clemson’s secondary. Bennett will have problems trying to deal with Clemson’s battle-tested defensive line, which are all looking like future NFL first rounders, like the guys who beat the crap out of Alabama in 2019.

For Clemson, DJ Uiagalelei’s starting his first full season. He’s got a cannon to challenge Georgia’s young secondary. He tore it up doing clean-up last year, but after the transfer of Taisun Phommachanh to LSU, he’s got the starting job. Lyn-J Dixon and Darien Reacher both decided to come back for one more season. They had gotten some glory sitting behind Etienne last season, but will test Georgia’s front. DJ’s top target will be Joseph Negata, who was one of the top wide receivers last year and could cause havoc in the secondary.

It’s going to be a cracker.

PREDICTION: Georgia 31, Clemson 20.