Josh Brooks didn’t frame Georgia’s Florida site decision as a simple preference for one extra home date. He described it as a wider calculation - one that mixed money, competitive balance and a long-running tradition the Bulldogs didn’t want to treat lightly.
With Georgia and Florida meeting in Atlanta for the first time Saturday, Georgia’s athletic director explained on The Paul Finebaum Show why the rivalry stayed at neutral sites while Jacksonville’s stadium was being renovated. Brooks said the choice had to be made with more than one season in mind.
Finebaum pointed to “a lot of reports” that Kirby Smart would rather have played at Sanford Stadium and asked Brooks about that conversation.
“I think he obviously always loves to get as many home games at Sanford Stadium as possible,” Brooks said. “But I think when you look at it over a long-term stretch and you're trying to think about not just the revenue piece of it, but playing in a neutral site over the course of time gives you a better opportunity.
“Because, look, anytime you go on the road in the SEC, it's extremely difficult. And I've been in the Swamp before.”
Brooks also pointed to the hidden cost of turning a home game into a campus event. A matchup in Athens would have meant a return trip to Gainesville, and that was part of the bigger tradeoff he considered.
“So I think you weigh all that in and you want to be respectful to your coach,” he said.
The economics, he added, go beyond the gate. Neutral-site games can bring help from the host city that schools don’t always get when they stage the game on campus.
“Not only the corporate sponsorship, but just the way these cities step up and subsidize really great opportunities for you,” he said.
Saturday’s game at Mercedes-Benz Stadium starts the rivalry’s two-year detour. The teams will play in Tampa in 2027 before returning to Jacksonville in 2028, part of an agreement announced in November 2024 that keeps the game there through 2031.
The last time Jacksonville renovations pushed the game elsewhere, the rivalry went to campus. Florida hosted in Gainesville in 1994, and Georgia hosted in Athens in 1995, while the Gator Bowl was rebuilt for the NFL’s expansion Jaguars. Every meeting since 1933 has been in Jacksonville except for those two games.
Georgia is the designated home team Saturday, but the setting remains neutral. No.
3 Georgia (6-1, 4-1 SEC) and No. 17 Florida (5-2, 3-2) are set for a 3:30 p.m.
ET kickoff on ABC.
Brooks also tied the decision back to the people who shaped the rivalry before him, including Vince Dooley, Georgia’s longtime coach and later athletic director.
“There's a lot of people that came before me, and I've had plenty of conversations with Coach Dooley when he was alive about this very topic,” Brooks said. “And I think you have to respect the tradition that is Jacksonville and what it's meant to so many people for so long.”
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