ESPN Commentary

Head football coaches love a good strength and conditioning coach more than they love their wives.

The strength guy is the conduit to the players during the offseason, and a primary motivational force during the season.

To be a good college strength coach, you generally must be loudly enthusiastic and borderline crazy. This is a wild-boy sport. Serene and cerebral isn't going to coax that last bench press rep out of a college kid on a predawn winter morning. It isn't going to motivate players for a final sprint on a 100-degree summer afternoon, either.

For that job, you need a guy with no "off" switch. You need a Scott Cochran.

He's the head football strength and conditioning coach at Alabama. You probably had not heard of him prior to this week. But now that a video camera caught Cochran appointing himself funeral director of Sanford Stadium, people have taken notice.

On Tuesday, Cochran was doing what strength coaches do: firing up the Crimson Tide players during prepractice stretching. It's their job to build energy for practice, to get players stoked for the mundanity and repetition of their daily drills.

It wasn't a hard job this week in Tuscaloosa. Not when the No. 8 Crimson Tide heads to Athens to play No. 3 Georgia on Saturday (ESPN, 7:45 p.m. ET). "It doesn't get any bettah than this!" Cochran bellowed on camera in his New Orleans accent. "It don't get any bettah!"

About a minute into the clip, Cochran alludes to the "blackout" Georgia has orchestrated for this game: The Bulldogs in black jerseys and fans dressed in black as well. Cochran tells the players that the Dawgs are wearing black because "they're going to a [expletive] funeral!"

That's not exactly the first profane words heard at a football practice, and it's pretty standard strength-coach bravado. But in the SEC, where everything is magnified to Hubble telescope dimensions, the comment resonated across the Chattahoochee River and into Athens.

Which is why Georgia coach Mark Richt went to practice Wednesday in a black hat, black shirt and black shorts. Asked about it afterward, Richt deadpanned, "I'm going to a funeral."

Pause.

"Should I have said that?"

Of course you should have, Mark. We've got stories to write.

The natural follow-up question -- Richt's response to the Cochran bite -- was met with feigned ignorance.

"I don't know what you're talking about," he said with a smile.

Thus the Great Blackout and Attendant Funeral Fuss has helped supply some bite to The Rivalry That Isn't. In a league rife with rivalries, Georgia-Alabama has been curiously absent.

That's a product of scheduling, not a lack of long-term competitiveness on either side. Alabama is No. 1 all-time in SEC regular-season victories from 1933-2007 (341 wins) and Georgia is No. 3 (283), but they've gone long stretches without playing each other.

Herschel Walker never played against Bear Bryant, for example. Alabama's last national championship team never had to lock horns with a 10-win Georgia team in 1992. This will be just the fourth meeting since 1995 and just the eighth since 1985.

For Alabama, the primary East Division rival is Tennessee (90 all-time meetings). For Georgia, the primary West Division rival is Auburn (111 all-time meetings). With just 64 games between the Tide and the 'Dogs, this rivalry has not measured up.

It's not for a lack of natural differences. Each side has something the other lacks.

Alabama doesn't have Atlanta, the cultural and commercial capital of the South. Georgia doesn't have six AP national titles like the Tide's.

Alabama doesn't have an animal anywhere near as cool as UGA. Georgia doesn't have an animal anywhere near as accomplished as the Bear.

Alabama doesn't have a Heisman in any of its trophy cases. Georgia has two: Frank Sinkwich is 1942 and Walker in 1982.

So there is ample room to debate and disagree. Especially now that Scott Cochran piped up. But really, the modern rivalry might have caught fire last year in Tuscaloosa.

Georgia won a wild, back-and-forth affair 26-23 in overtime, scoring on a 25-yard touchdown pass on its first play of OT from Matthew Stafford to tiny wideout Mikey Henderson. That resulted in a euphoric end zone Dawgpile, which in turn resulted in a barrage of plastic cups flying at the Georgia players from the Alabama student section.

That victory helped spark the Dogs to an eventual No. 2 national ranking, and helped send the Tide on its uneven path to 7-6 and the Independence Bowl. Bama hasn't forgotten the sting of that victory, and Georgia hasn't forgotten the parting gifts showered upon it from the stands.

The pass was a thing of beauty and might be a prime reason why Alabama coach Nick Saban said Wednesday that Stafford "is probably the best quarterback in the country." Tim Tebow might argue that Stafford isn't even the best quarterback in the SEC East, but that's another story for another day (say, Nov. 1, when they play the Cocktail Party game).

For now, Alabama-Georgia is enough to captivate the SEC and a good portion of the nation. It will decide which one of the two proud programs remains at the forefront of the national championship discussion, and it will decide which team's bragging rights must rest in peace.

Pat Forde is a senior writer for ESPN.com. He can be reached at ESPN4D@aol.com.