I never made any sort of formal announcement, but I'm guessing you can tell that yes, there will be new editions of "The Last Time" this year during the Georgia football season.
Hopefully you guys, like me, have recovered from the rollercoaster that was the 2017 football season, what with the dazzling road trip (and dramatic finish) for the Notre Dame game, blasting the Vols right off of Rocky Top, exorcising all the demons of the World's Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party, pulling away from Auburn in the SEC Championship game and watching Baker Mayfield hang his head after the Rose Bowl.
I'm ready for more.
So let's get started. First up ont his year's schedule: Austin Peay.
The last time...
1) These teams met:
This the first meeting between the two schools, but let's not waste this space. Let's be productive, shall we? I learned at a work meeting one time that productivity is good.
So let's get a look at Austin Peay, which I'm sure most of you had to Google when the game was announced.
Their mascot is the Governors. Nathan Deal has not confirmed which side he is rooting for, but could be recusing himself due to a conflict of interest.
The school itself is located in Clarksville, Tennessee, which is just northwest of Nashville, right along the Kentucky border in the western part of the state.
The school was founded in 1845 as the Montgomery County Male Academy, the inspiration for Georgia Tech sponsored by the local Masonic Lodge, and now boasts a student population just a shade under 11,000.
2) Georgia lost its first home game of the year:
The Bulldogs are working on six consecutive wins in home openers, a list that is a mixture of cupcakes and heavyweights.
The last home opener lost in Sanford Stadium was in 2011, when Georgia lost a wild, whacky game to South Carolina, 45-42, to start the season 0-2.
Since then, the Bulldogs have reeled off home opening wins against Buffalo, South Carolina, Clemson, UL Monroe, Nicholls State and Appalachian State.
That number figures to reach seven this year, though it should be noted that Austin Peay is no slouch at the FCS level, earning a preseason ranking of No. 24.
(Somewhere, Larry Munson is telling a fellow Heaven resident that the Governors just have too much speed, we can't block them and it's going to be a dogfight.)
3) Austin Peay won more than one game, two seasons in a row:
I don't know if I can underscore how underwhelming the Governors football history has been, and nothing is more telling than the fact that its website's URL is "LetsGoPeay.com" — exactly the words I say to my dog when I usher him into the backyard each night before bed.
The school has fielded a football team since 1930, owning a 283–535–16 record, though recent years have presented quite the turnaround for the little school in Northern Tennessee.
Austin Peay finished 8-4 in 2017, good for second in the Ohio Valley Conference, which is impressive when you consider the Governors had just graduated a group of seniors in 2016 that won exactly one game in four years.
But, to answer this stat posed above, we need to return to 2011 and 2012, when Austin Peay went 3-9 and 2-9, respectively.
4) Georgia played a game without Nick Chubb or Sony Michel:
Saturday will be the first time since my very last game as a member of the Redcoat Band that the Bulldogs will play a game without two of its most decorated players to ever wear the Red and Black.
The Taxslayer Bowl loss to Nebraska that followed the underwhelming 2013 season marks the last time Chubb and Michel weren't in the game for Georgia.
It just so happened to be the last game of my senior year in Athens.
Since then, we were spoiled with 54 consecutive games with Nos. 1 and 27 totin' that rock.
And talk about a tumultuous four years for the SEC's leading rushing duo. Those 54 games included two head coaches, three offensive coordinators, three runningbacks coaches, five starting quarterbacks, five games against Auburn (with a 4-1 record, at that), one conference championship and one Rose Bowl victory.
5) Austin Peay defeated a 1-A/FBS team:
There are a couple ways to answer this. If we're talking about a current member of the FBS, then we need to travel back to 1995 for what is actually a far more interesting upset than I ever imagined.
That season, the Governors, who would finish 2-8, defeated Western Kentucky 38-34. The Hilltoppers would also finish 2-8.
So how on earth could a 1-AA game featuring a pair of 2-8 teams have in the category of "interesting"?
Well, let's start with Austin Peay.
Actually, let's don't. There's not much going on with them.
On the other side of the ball, you had a Western Kentucky squad with two fairly big names on its ledger. The head coach? Some guy named Jack Harbaugh, father to Jim and John, the head coaches of Michigan and the Baltimore Ravens, respectively.
And who quarterbacked that Hilltopper squad? Willie Taggart, the head coach of Florida State.
But, as I hinted at already, there is a second way to answer this question — the most recent Austin Peay victory over a team that was in the 1-A/FBS division at the time the game was played.
To get there, let's hop in the time machine and travel back to 1987, where we'll find the Kansas State Wildcats already in year 47 of Bill Snyder's tenure in the midst of a dreadful 0-10-1 season.
K-State got that horrendous campaign off to a rocky start with a 26-22 loss to the Governors in Manhattan, Kansas.
And keep in mind, this wasn't exactly an App-State-over-Michigan sort of upset, where a top-of-the-line 1-AA team upset a pretty good 1-A team. No, this was a very bad 1-AA team knocking off a very bad 1-A team. That very same Austin-Peay team would finish 2-9, a season that ended with a 40-0 loss to Murray State.
Kansas State still managed to tie Kansas, though.
6) Georgia shutout an opponent at home:
The Bulldogs two most recent shutouts — 2014 against Missouri and 2017 against Tennessee — came on the road, but we certainly can't rule out the possibility of seeing one Saturday.
If so, it would be the first time since...also 2014.
Week 3 of the 2014 season saw a hapless Troy team trot out Between the Hedges, only to get rocked 66-0, the largest margin of victory ever recorded in Mark Richt's time as head coach.
Even Faton Bauta scored that day, and twice at that.
7) Austin Peay won its opener:
The Governors are working on seven consecutive years of 0-1 starts to their football seasons.
The last time Austin Peay brought home a dub-ya in Week 1 was all the way back in 2010, when it beat Cumberland University, an NAIA school, 38-6 to kick off the season.
Since then, the String Peays have lost by an aggregate score of 314-44 in opening games. That's an average score of 45-6.
8) Georgia got an interception from a non-defensive back:
The last time Georgia's defense got a pick from somebody outside the secondary, Jeremy Pruitt was the defensive coordinator.
In the 2015 Tennessee game, LB Jake Ganus, the transfer from UAB, got a pick off of a tipped pass from Josh Dobbs.
Since then, the Junkyard Dawgs have pulled down 33 interceptions, all from the defensive backfield.
Mel Tucker knows how to coach a secondary, man.
9) Austin Peay won four games in a row:
Despite all the bashing I've given the Governors so far in this column, they do come into the game on a three-game winning streak, closing out 2017 with victories over Tennessee Tech, Eastern Kentucky and Eastern Illinois.
A win Saturday would, of course, be as monumental of an upset as you'd find in college football, but those odds perhaps get even longer when you consider how long it's been since Peay-Wee won four games in a row.
Because, much like Georgia fans, Austin Peay has fond memories of 1980. (See? I can take at a shot my own school, too.)
That year, the Governors got off to a rocky 1-3 start before ripping off six consecutive victories, finishing third in the conference.
Fun fact: Boise State won the 1-AA national championship that season, defeating Austin Peay's conference rival, Eastern Kentucky.
10) Georgia played only one quarterback in its opener:
I'll go ahead and file this one into the "not gonna happen" category, but we love hypotheticals here at The Last Time, so I'll entertain the court.
Let's go back to 2014, when the Bulldogs opened the season Between the Hedges against Clemson.
Fifth-year senior Hutson Mason took every snap for Georgia, guiding a high-powered rushing attack to a 45-21 thrashing in Athens.
Since then, we've seen Greyson Lambert/Brice Ramsey in a blowout win over UL Monroe in 2015, Lambert/Jacob Eason in the win over North Carolina in the Georgia Dome in 2016 and Eason/Jake Fromm in the Appalachian State game to start 2017.
***
As far as I know, this game doesn't have a line — at least none I can find on ye ol' Internet.
But I don't see this one being close, so long as Georgia comes to play, which I have no reason to suspect it won't.
Hazarding a guess at a final score, let's go with 48-10, with Austin Peay tacking on some late points in garbage time, after Fromm guides the offense to a 35-0 first-half lead. The fans will get to see plenty of Justin Fields, the freshman phenom, in the second half.
It's good to be back, folks.
