Georgia did it. Georgia won one.
The question with Kirby Smart, at least, in recent years, has been whether he could do the coaching part of recruiting and coaching a team capable of winning a national championship. Recruiting has always been there for the Dawgs, and especially so under Smart, in whose tenure UGA ranks second in average 247 Sports recruiting ranking, trailing only the Crimson Tide of Alabama.
That team—the Alabama Crimson Tide—is a big part of this, beyond just being the title game opponent. They’re a rival. They’re the king of the SEC raft. They’re also, importantly, coached by Nick Saban, from whose tree Kirby Smart spawned.
We don’t often talk about Saban’s age. He seems younger than 70, but the tree rings don’t lie, and even Bill Snyder was 79 when he finally hung things up for good. With Saban presumably approaching retirement in the not-too-distant future, Dabo Swinney’s program stumbling at the moment, and Urban Meyer toxic (at least for the day), the question of who could fill Saban’s void does circle back, in part, to Smart, who—to answer that recent years question—finally did the coaching well enough this season to grab that title, four years after coming so close against the same Crimson Tide.
Today, though, isn’t a day to ask too many questions of college football’s future. It’s the Dawgs’ day, a day for them to celebrate. For the first time since 1980 and, by their account (which appears rather reasonable in a practice where reason is often absent), the third time ever, Georgia is our national champion.
Today is also a day to talk about Stetson Bennett, and whether this is an endorsement of Smart’s coaching or just something that worked out, Smart’s loyalty to his quarterback paid off. Did Bennett make jaw-dropping, Aaron Rodgers-like throws to carve up the Alabama defense? No. He didn’t make terrible throws, but his most notable toss of the day required his receiver to climb back over a defender to haul it in. Bennett did, though, make the throws he needed to make, and he made the throws Georgia needed him to make to knock off Alabama. It’s hard to ask for much more than that, and it was hard not to be elated for the kid watching his reaction to the victory in those moments right after Kelee Ringo brought the clinching interception back for a score. Those tears, at least for me, were moving. It’s moving to watch someone triumph.
Why did Georgia need only adequacy from their signal caller? Their vast talent elsewhere, for starters (again, Smart is a great recruiter, and in college football, that can get you far). But it was what that talent did, and where it did it, that made the difference. Twice, the Bulldog defense turned Alabama back inside the ten-yard line. On the drive that left Georgia up eight, the Bulldog line opened holes for chunk after chunk on the ground. As consequentially as anything, Georgia put constant-enough pressure on Bryce Young that he made mistakes, throwing two easy picks after throwing just four interceptions over the entire regular season and only one over a stretch spanning from October 16th through the SEC Championship. Overall, Georgia dominated the game, losing the total yards battle but outgaining the Tide on an efficiency basis by 1.8 yards per play, and that accounts for all those Alabama sacks.
It was a fitting end to a season which began, for many intents and purposes, with Georgia taking down Clemson in Atlanta, announcing themselves right away as a, if not the, title favorite. In early October, the Dawgs shut out eighth-ranked Arkansas, putting up 37 on the Hogs in a laugher. Two more blowouts over ranked opponents followed, after which came the trouncing of Florida in Jacksonville just two weeks before UGA smoked Tennessee at home. When the bad game came, it stung, but once the dust had settled after the SEC Championship, it turned out Georgia was fine. Michigan proved no match for Kirby Smart’s team, and in the end, even Alabama wasn’t enough.
We talk now and then here about the legitimacy of specific college football national champions. We like to say that the 2007-08 season should have ended championless, an argument we sometimes extend to the season Ohio State won it after getting rocked by Virginia Tech (2014-15) and various other years. This is not one of those years. Georgia is a legitimate champion. They walked over nearly everyone. The one team that beat them, they came back to beat. Even the circumstances of that loss give it mild clarity in hindsight—Georgia really did have nothing to lose, it turns out, while Alabama was playing to keep its season alive.
Overall, it was a great game. There were some complaints early, due to the lack of touchdowns, but the thing was white-knuckle, it had twists and turns, and at least from my vantage point, the team which felt like the winner as the game moved to the fourth quarter did not win the game. Within the history of the College Football Playoff, it slots in rather neatly as the fourth-best national championship of the eight, and the best one we’ve seen since these teams last met for the title back in the early days of 2018. It brings Alabama to 3-3 in these championship games, the SEC to 5-4, and Georgia…to 1-1.
One in the win column.
One very well-deserved.
