Beat the spread!

Looking for a muscular take on Georgia’s next game?  Let Brad Edwards fill the bill for you.

However, Smart’s team has showed up with authority in all of its big games. Before Oregon went on an eight-game winning streak with seven victories by double-digit margins, the Ducks took a backyard assbeating from Georgia by a 49-3 score in the season opener.

When the Bulldogs went to Columbia to face South Carolina in front of a raucous crowd at Williams-Brice Stadium on Sept. 17, they absolutely bludgeoned the Gamecocks in a 48-7 pimpslap. In mid-October, Georgia trounced Auburn 42-10 and blasted Vanderbilt, 55-0.

In its annual showdown with Florida in Jacksonville on Oct. 29, UGA raced out to a 21-0 lead it was 28-3 at halftime. Although the Gators fought back and made it a one-possession game with 17 unanswered points in the first 12 minutes of the third quarter, the Bulldogs responded with back-to-back touchdown drives to pull away for a 42-20 win.

In a vintage letdown scenario after the win over Tennessee (and two weeks after beating arch-rival UF), Georgia went into Starkville and collected a 45-19 win. Then at the SEC Championship Game in Atlanta last week, the Bulldogs took a 35-7 lead on LSU late in the second quarter en route to a 50-30 win.

“Assbeating”.  “Pimpslap.”  I detect no falsehoods there.

Meanwhile, Ohio State’s track record in the postseason against SEC teams is mixed, at best.

However, Ohio St. has lost 11 of 13 games against SEC opponents in the postseason. We aren’t counting 1986 and 1998 bowl wins over Texas A&M because the Aggies didn’t join the SEC until 2012, but we are counting the win over the Razorbacks 12 years ago even though that victory was vacated by the NCAA.

In Ohio St.’s 11 losses to SEC foes in bowl games, six of the defeats have been by margins of 14 points or more. When the Buckeyes faced Florida in the 2006 BCS Championship Game, they were limited to 82 yards of total offense and lost 41-14.

One year later at the BCS Championship Game in New Orleans, OSU lost 38-24 to LSU. Just two years ago, Alabama trounced the Buckeyes by a 52-24 count in the CFP finals.

Before that win by ‘Bama in blowout fashion, I went on more than a half-dozen radio shows and said that the Crimson Tide would absolutely destroy the Buckeyes. Over the next three weeks, I’ll be doing to the exact same thing in discussing the looming beatdown Ohio St. fans know they’re going to take from Georgia.

He’s putting his money where his mouth is, too.

This single-digit number that’s somehow less than seven is an absolute gift. The moment I saw the number, I immediately placed my largest wager of the season on the Bulldogs.

When the adjusted numbers — such as UGA -14.5 for a +220-ish payout and/or UGA -17.5 for a +300 return, etc. — come out later this month, I’ll be betting a few of those, too.

This is a complete mismatch, and that would be the case regardless of where the game was played. The fact that it’s in Atlanta, where UGA has already beaten Oregon and LSU by a combined score of 99-33 this year, isn’t even really a part of our equation here, but it sure as hell doesn’t hurt our cause.

If you haven’t made it to the window yet, what are you waiting for? Georgia is going to win by at least three TDs and probably more.

From his lips… er, wallet to Gawd’s ears.

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