Cornerback T’Sharvan Bell’s been through the Georgia-Alabama gauntlet in each of the past two years.

The junior has coined a phrase to help explain just what playing two of Auburn’s most bitter rivals in quick succession means to the younger players on the team.

“I like to call them ‘club rockers,’” Bell said. “When it’s real live in the club, and everybody’s pushing around and getting physical in the club, that’s the kind of thing I try to explain to them. I feel like it kind of correlates. They can better understand it.

“You better get your mind right before you go into these games.”

The Georgia and Alabama games are historically — and collectively — part of Auburn’s “Amen Corner” to end each season.

The Auburn-Georgia game is just the “Deep South’s Oldest Rivalry,” a series the Tigers lead 54-52-8 and in which the Bulldogs have outscored the Tigers by only 38 points over 114 meetings, an average win of 15.87-15.54.

Sure, the Georgia and Alabama games are separated by a homecoming matchup with Samford this year, just the second time in 47 years the Tigers have not closed out the year against the Bulldogs and Crimson Tide consecutively.

That doesn’t cheapen the experience any.

“It was just the pinnacle of your season,” said defensive line coach Mike Pelton, who experienced the rivalries as a player with the Tigers from 1991-94. “Half our team was from Georgia, and the other half was from Alabama, so I think everybody understood, it was just a given, that those were the rivalry games, those were the games that define your season.

“It was just an understanding.”

Auburn has 17 players on its roster from Georgia, the state university of which the Tigers play Saturday in the first leg of “Amen Corner.”

Defensive tackle Jeffrey Whitaker, a Warner Robins, Ga., native, was inundated with Georgia fandom when he was a child.

So this one’s just a little special for him.

“You know the coaches, you know the players,” Whitaker said. “It was always put it out in my mind, that I wanted to play Georgia.”

The Bulldogs have won seven straight games after starting the season with back-to-back losses to Boise State and South Carolina to start the season.

Georgia’s atop the SEC East and has taken the driver’s wheel after a rough start.

“I just think they’re solid all the way around,” Tigers head coach Gene Chizik said. “They’re just an extremely talented, very physical football team. And I think they’re playing with a lot of confidence right now.”

Georgia is coming off a 63-16 win over an overmanned New Mexico State squad Saturday, one in which the Bulldogs put up 42 points in the second quarter.

And that was a Georgia team missing leading rusher Isaiah Crowell and running backs Ken Malcome and Carlton Thomas due to suspensions.

They’re all back this week. Along with quarterback Aaron Murray, who has thrown for 2,060 yards and 23 touchdowns against only eight interceptions this year.

“He lives up to the billing,” Chizik said. “He makes that offense extremely explosive because at any time, they’re going to throw the ball vertically down the field and hit some big plays.

“Aaron definitely makes them click. He’s playing very confident, too.”

Auburn’s coming off a bye week that followed a 41-23 win over Ole Miss and — from all indications — is as fresh as it’s been all season just in time for the stretch run.

One that starts with two teams still a bit chippy from the 16-penalty, 162-yard, two-ejection game at Jordan-Hare Stadium last year.

“Everyone kind of thought it was a friendlier rivalry until it got a little heated at the end,” tight end Philip Lutzenkirchen said. “We know they remember that from last year, and we remember them kind of coming after us toward the end.”