Georgia high school football is back — and earlier than ever before

“I think for the whole country, people are going to be watching this,” said I.J. Rosenberg, president of Score Atlanta, which runs and organizes the Corky Kell + Dave Hunter Classic. “Fans have a way of finding broadcasts across the country that they want to watch, and now that you’re able to do that, I’m really excited to see.”

The annual Corky Kell opens with four games split between Wednesday and Thursday at Mercedes-Benz Stadium. South Gwinnett and Lanier will open the event at 5 p.m. on Wednesday.

The Comets and Longhorns will play for the first time since 2017. Both teams went 5-5 in the regular season last year and will compete in difficult regions again this season. South Gwinnett’s Region 4-7A features Grayson, Newton and Archer, and Lanier will battle Gainesville, Milton and Roswell in Region 7-6A.

Grayson and North Gwinnett will follow South Gwinnett-Lanier at 8 p.m. in a heavyweight battle with national implications. The Rams and Bulldogs are both top-5 teams in Class 7A and top-100 teams in several national polls.

North Gwinnett, which won its last state championship in 2017, can make a statement to Gwinnett County, Georgia and the country with a win. Grayson aims to extend its regular-season winning streak to 20 games.

Brookwood, which has played in every Corky Kell since its inception in 1992, will face Cambridge at 5 p.m. on Thursday.

The Broncos will try to stop a two-year Corky Kell losing streak while Cambridge will try to win its debut game in the classic. Both teams are coming off 9-3 seasons that ended in the second round of the playoffs.

Roswell and Walton will kick off Georgia’s final game of the week at 8 p.m. on Thursday. Both teams enter 2026 with plenty of momentum, as Roswell won the heavy-hitting Region 7-6A last season and Walton made a run to the Class 6A quarterfinals as a No. 4 seed.

All four games will be televised on Atlanta News First and can be streamed at atlantanewsfirst.com.