No. 3 Georgia opens Week 1 against Tennessee State on Saturday at 3 p.m. ET, and the first thing to watch may not be the scoreboard. The Georgia Bulldogs are favored by 46.5 points, but Kirby Smart is talking more about the heat than the spread.
The game will be on +, with Clay Matvick, Rocky Boiman and Laura Stickells on the call, and viewers will need a subscription to watch through the WatchESPN app. That matters now because the on-field temperature is expected to climb into triple digits, a test that turns a routine opener into something a little less routine for Georgia and Tennessee State.
Georgia comes in off a 12-2 season, one that ended with an SEC title and then a loss in its first College Football Playoff game. Tennessee State opened its season with a loss to Jackson State. So the matchup carries the usual Week 1 imbalance, but also the first live look at how Georgia handles the players it has not settled on yet.
Smart said Georgia practiced in hot conditions during camp and called it probably the hottest camp the program has had. He said the team scrimmaged in it, and that he wants to see whether players and fans can handle it. That is the friction inside a game Georgia is expected to control easily: the Bulldogs may be better by a wide margin, but Saturday also asks whether they stay sharp when the temperature itself becomes part of the contest.
Saturday will be the first chance to see newcomers including Isiah Canion, Khalil Barnes and Zykie Helton, and it will also show how the backup quarterback, safety and right tackle battles look when the game speed counts. If Georgia does what it is supposed to do, the larger question may not be the final score at all. It may be how much the Bulldogs learn about themselves before the schedule gets harder.
