ATHENS — Georgia’s victory over Alabama in the 2022 college football playoff national championship game created a lasting memory for offensive lineman Sedrick Van Pran.
It wasn’t just the game, where the Bulldogs defeated their conference rival to secure the program’s first national title since 1980. Connecting with former Bulldogs’ star turned NFL All-Pro running back Nick Chubb in the locker room also proved meaningful.
“I was thanking him for everything he did for the university,” Van Pran said. “I remember him telling me, ‘Nah man — thank you. I can finally sleep again.’ That was one of the coolest moments I’ve had at Georgia: having a legend like that come to me and be thankful for something we had accomplished as a team.”
No. 1 Georgia and No. 8 Alabama will meet for the first time since that matchup following the 2021 season Saturday in the SEC Championship. The ‘natty’ got the “monkey off Georgia’s back,” Van Pran said.
But he and other members of the Georgia program want to be clear: they feel that victory over Alabama — Georgia’s first since 2007 — has little bearing on Saturday’s matchup.
Coach Kirby Smart was brief on the significance of that game for the program: it meant Georgia won a national title, he said.
The teams are also “very different” now, Smart said. Both teams have new starting quarterbacks, and few who competed in the 2022 meeting are still playing college football.
That win does nothing for the Bulldogs this weekend, Van Pran said. It’s two different groups and a totally different process, he said.
What matters to Van Pran: understanding that Georgia and Alabama are among the country’s top teams, meaning the Bulldogs will have to be the “best version” of themselves at all times.
“This is usually around the time when every little mistake counts,” Van Pran said. “Everything is much more magnified. All those things come back to haunt you.”
For the Bulldogs, the focus is more on the stage than the opponent. Georgia has as many SEC championships under Smart as they do national championships (two). They fell to Alabama in the 2021 SEC Championship before ultimately defeating the Crimson Tide for the national title.
Smart said he has a “great appreciation” for the game, citing his experience watching the SEC as a child then going on to play and coach in the league.
He said his experience with the game as an assistant at Alabama was no different, citing a year the Tide won the national championship after losing the SEC championship just as Georgia did in 2021-22.
“That’s happened a couple times in our conference,” Smart said. “It’s hard to find that in most conferences. It speaks to the depth of our conference. It speaks to how hard it is just to get to the game.”
“In some ways, Alabama and us have been spoiled. I don’t think some kids appreciate (that). They think it’s a rite of passage. It’s not. It’s earned. Some of the greatest venues, environments that I’ve been part of (have been SEC Championships).”
The game could make or break either team’s College Football Playoff chances (though there would likely be significant debate over Alabama’s inclusion should they win Saturday).
But Van Pran said he doesn’t view the game as a start to the playoffs. The focus is on this week, he said, and bringing home a conference championship.
After experiencing defeat and victory in the SEC Championship game, Van Pran said he knows where both games took a turn. He’s tried to relay that message to the Bulldogs.
“It’s an extreme honor to be able to go out there and represent this conference as a champion,” Van Pran said. “It’s not something we take lightly at all. It’s something that we deeply want.”
