Georgia head football coach Kirby Smart’s 2023 team lost just once, to CFP-bound Alabama, the team that gave an undefeated national champion Michigan its best fight all season. Back then, there was a four-team playoff field. UGA was left out of the CFP but laid a 63-3 smackdown on FSU during that season’s Orange Bowl.
USA Today’s Blake Toppmeyer believes SEC loyalists will use that effort to make the Bulldogs a persistent what-if about that season.
The SEC’s stranglehold loosened (on the CFP) last season, when Michigan beat Washington in the national championship game after surviving Alabama in the Rose Bowl,” Toppmeyer wrote.
“But, SEC loyalists could point to Georgia’s snub from the four-team playoff and speculate as to how the Bulldogs would have fared against Michigan.”
SEC loyalists” might be an oxymoron. Being in the SEC means being loyal to one team. Few defend the conference as a whole.
Furthermore, there’s a bit of an obsession with hypothetical outcomes in the “It Just Means More” conference. The actual results need to just mean more. Georgia lost to Alabama in the SEC Championship Game, ceding their chance at Michigan.
Still, engaging the idea, it’s hard not to think about what UGA’s No. 5 defense could’ve done to slow JJ McCarthy, Blake Corum, and the rest of the Wolverines’ attack. They would’ve at least had a better chance than Washington.
Watching an earnest three-peat bid would’ve been great in a 12-team CFP but alas, the 2023 Bulldogs were unfortunately ahead of their time, living in a four-team playoff world.
