When you play one team 116 times, you definitely are going to get to know the other side well.
If students and alumni of Auburn University call themselves the Auburn Family, then those from the University of Georgia are definitely the in-laws.
Former Auburn head coach Pat Dye once called the Deep South's Oldest Rivalry a game between brothers.
"I don't think anybody who plays in that game can ever forget it," Dye once said. "It just doesn't matter much where it's played or what somebody's record is. It's so intense and tough, but at the same time, it's family."
Dye is not the only key figure in the rivalry who had experience at both schools.
Legendary Georgia head coach and athletic director Vince Dooley was an Auburn graduate who later was an assistant on The Plains under Ralph "Shug" Jordan.
Georgia hired Jordan to be an assistant football coach and head basketball coach before he came back to Auburn. Jordan called the rivalry game against Georgia his personal favorite during his time in Auburn.
A historian of the game, Jordan once told a story of the rivalry's early days, when Auburn's Cliff Hare and Georgia's Charles Herty were in charge of the schools' budding athletic programs.
"They would come to Dean Hare's house on Gay Street in Auburn after the game in Columbus to divide the money," Jordan said. "They would take the gate receipts out of an old cigar box, spread it on the kitchen table and say, 'a dollar for you and a dollar for us,' until the game proceeds were divided equally between the two schools."
While the money and popularity of college football has changed drastically since the days of Hare and Herty, the relationship between Auburn and Georgia has not.
Following in the footsteps of Dooley, Dye and Jordan, stars who played at one school became assistant coaches at the other.
Current defensive line coach Rodney Garner, a former offensive lineman for the Tigers, joined Gus Malzahn's staff this past offseason after 15 years on Mark Richt's staff at Georgia.
To add another element to the schools' SEC rivalries, Georgia graduate Will Muschamp was a defensive coordinator at Auburn -- and now is the head coach of the Florida Gators, a rival for both schools.
For more than a few of Auburn's current players, the rivalry carries an extra significance. Twenty-six of Auburn players are from Georgia, a state Auburn has heavily recruited in recent years.
"I feel for everybody from Georgia it's a personal game," said Auburn cornerback Jonathan Mincy, a native of East Atlanta. "Just being able to play against people you know, it's going to be a fun game and I'm excited to go out there and play."
And sometimes, like in the case of Mincy, players enter the game with extra motivation because the top dogs in their home state did not recruit them.
"It is just really going out there and showing them what they missed out on," Mincy said. "I was blessed with the opportunity to come here and play. I love being here. I'm just ready to go out there and pound up on (Georgia)."
With the shadows of giants like Dye and Dooley hanging over players like Wright and Mincy, the 117th meeting of these two college football powerhouses has all the makings of another memorable family feud.
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