Kirby Smart and Nick Saban have been attached at the hip for years, and when Smart was hired in Athens, the hope was Georgia would emulate Alabama and the two schools would battle for college football supremacy.

That has already happened, of course, with the two teams meeting in last year’s National Championship Game. Both plan to be back this year, with Georgia hoping for a different result.

College football’s two biggest debates all summer have been about the quarterback situations at Alabama and Georgia. Watching Smart and Saban handle similar quarterback situations is great theatre. It’s very entertaining, but it’s also been different. Even Philadelphia’s Doug Pederson has been entertaining as well fighting with the media over his quarterback decision.

Saban had a meltdown after Saturday night’s game, blistering ESPN’s Maria Taylor in his postgame interview. Pederson has melted down, too. Saban has since apologized and reminded us that we love all our children, even when one is better than the other at something — thanks for that, Nick — and he’s gone on and named Tua Tagovailoa the starter for Week 2 over Jalen Hurts. Simple enough.

(By the way, two can play that game. I thought this was hilarious from my pal Norman Chad:)

Saban has done this many times before, and Smart watched it all play out for years as Alabama’s defensive coordinator under Saban. Alabama has had quarterback flip-flopping early in the season for years, and oftentimes it hasn’t mattered, with the best guy finally winning the job and some — like Jake Coker — going on to win a national title despite not starting every game.

Smart surely learned from Saban, and he readily admits he’s learned a lot from the game’s best coach. He has done a great job of handling this Jake Fromm/Justin Fields debate all spring and fall, and deserves to be commended for that. He has handled it much better than Saban and Pederson.

He’s basically said from the beginning that there was a pecking order — Fromm first, Fields second, especially after Jacob Eason transferred — and his comments after practices have almost always been about the both of them. He doesn’t seem to want to talk about one without the other. He has often praised them both, but then he was critical of both after the second fall scrimmage, when both were tested with more pass plays and neither was perfect.

How he scripted playing time in the opener was harmless because there was never a concern that tiny Austin Peay could compete with No. 3 Georgia. Georgia scored the first six times it had the ball, first with Fromm and then with Fields at the helm.

Both had good numbers but, again, it’s just Austin Peay. Fromm was 12-for-16 passing (75 percent) for 157 yards and two scores. Fields was 7-for-8 passing (87 percent) for 63 yards and a score.

Credit: Dale Zanine-USA TODAY Sports

So now it gets serious. Georgia travels to South Carolina Saturday (3:30 p.m. ET, TV: CBS) and this will not be easy. The Gamecocks didn’t make the Top 25 in the AP and Coaches preseason polls, but don’t be fooled by that because they were 26th in both polls and probably will be ranked this week after losses by Texas and Florida State, which were in the back quarter of the rankings.

Winning on the road in the SEC is hard, especially when it’s South Carolina, which might be the second-best team in the SEC East. It’s going to be very interesting to see when Smart pulls the trigger on Fields this week. Fromm has been through the wars already, and a hostile environment at South Carolina won’t shock him. He has earned the start, certainly, and he has also earned the right now to see this game through if it stays close throughout, which is very likely.

What Smart has done to keep the peace — unlike Saban and Peterson — is keeping Fromm and Fields on the same page together. Will Fields play the third or fourth series no matter what? Will Smart wait to see how the game plays out? What if Fromm throws an interception? Does he get yanked for Fields?

That’s where it will get dicey. What makes the most sense is to just keep Fromm out there and let him continue to play well. Or maybe there will be a few scripted series for Fields and that’s it. Maybe it’s somewhere in between.

In either case, here’s where we’re at: Smart has done great with juggling this episode so far. But now that things start to get very important, can he continue this juggling act?

The soap-opera drama, it’s  going to be fun to watch.