Without a game being played, Georgia is again No. 1. It tops the AP poll for a second consecutive August. Preseason polls haven’t always counted for much — we recall 2008, when the hyped-to-the-heavens Bulldogs started No. 1 and straggled home 13th — but the new era of college football stands to benefit the “haves” more than ever. No program has more than UGA.
In the cold light of hindsight, the four-team playoff did Georgia no favors. Over the past seven seasons, it finished fifth — as in, “first team out” — three times, last year included. Three times the Bulldogs were granted CFP inclusion; they won it all twice and lost only on a night they didn’t take a snap while trailing.
Among teams reaching the playoff more than once, they’re tops in winning percentage. (Georgia’s is .833; Alabama’s is .643.) As good as that is, imagine what might have been.
Had the 12-team tournament been in place from 2017 on, only Georgia and Ohio State would have made it every single time. (A two-loss Alabama wound up 13th in 2019, the committee somehow forgot Rule No. 1: Bama gets the benefit of every doubt.) Not since 2016, Kirby Smart’s first season as head ball coach, has Georgia arrived at Selection Sunday with more than two losses.
No four-team field included a two-loss team. The first 12-team field might include a half-dozen.
Given Georgia’s schedule — at Alabama, at Texas, at Ole Miss — it’s possible to see the Bulldogs losing two regular-season games. (Though they’ve lost none since Nov. 7, 2020.) It’s hard to imagine them losing three. A two-loss Georgia would make any field of 12, even if those two losses kept the Bulldogs out of the SEC championship game.
Georgia almost never loses at home. It almost never loses to an opponent not of top-10 caliber. (The “almosts” refer to what happened against South Carolina in 2019, the strangest game ever played at Sanford Stadium.) Against everybody but Alabama, Georgia is 85-6 over seven seasons — and the guy who was coaching Alabama now works for ESPN.
This isn’t to say Georgia will win the next 10 national titles. Even Saban lost more playoffs (five) than he won (four). This is to say that, so long as Smart remains in place, Georgia will keep making the playoff, and this isn’t a team apt to lose to some No. 11 seed.
Any post-Saban ranking of the nation’s coaches must have Smart No. 1. The bigger issue is who’s No. 2. Dabo Swinney’s Clemson hasn’t finished in the AP top 10 since 2020. Ryan Day’s Ohio State ... well, we know about Ryan Day’s Ohio State. Kalen DeBoer, coming off one consecutive playoff run, is no longer in the Pac-12, not that there is a Pac-12.
Smart knows what he’s doing — he won two titles with Stetson Bennett — but he, again like Saban, hasn’t lost sight of what makes coaches great. As Smart said in November 2021, “There’s no coach out there who can outcoach recruiting.” Since 2017, Georgia’s lowest-ranked recruiting class was No. 4. The incoming group was No. 1. The still-forming 2025 group is No. 3.
Smart’s Georgia will always have players, and football isn’t a sport where a scrawny underdog can go nuts from the 3-point line and bust every bracket. Mark these words (pun semi-intended): The 12-team CFP won’t yield December/January madness. The best teams will still prevail. It has been a long time since the Bulldogs weren’t among the nation’s best teams.
Georgia will not win the next 10 titles. Nobody’s that good. Four or five sounds about right.
SEASON OPENER
Georgia vs. Clemson at Mercedes-Benz Stadium, Aug. 31, noon, ABC
