While I may not agree with them, there are two schools of thought on why Georgia won’t three-peat this season that I can at least respect. One is what Bruce Feldman espoused the other day — in an era where the quarterback has never been more important, he’s giving contenders with returning starters a leg up over those without. (Caveat: I give him credit for the logical consistency he showed, as opposed to the GameDay crew.)
The other is what I’d call the “it’s too damned hard to win three national championships” school. A good example of that comes from Matt Hinton, in his 2023 SEC preview.
Let’s get bold: Georgia will not 3-peat as national champion.
Yeah, I know. Only a fool these days lets himself get caught disrespectin’ the Dawgs, even by accident. Coming right out and volunteering for the job is an act of pure hubris. The defending champs earned 60 out of 63 first-place votes in the preseason AP poll and 61 out of 66 in the Coaches Poll, both of which they probably took in the locker room as grave insults for not being unanimous. They’re heavy favorites among the oddsmakers. This space has chronicled their relentless dominance over the past 2 seasons in minute detail, and been occasionally dead wrong in the process. The Dawgs slobber and rage over the idea that even a single living soul has even the slightest hint of doubt about their place at the top of the sport. If they do go all the way again, and Kirby Smart doesn’t have this column converted into a mock newspaper headline ready to wave in front of the cameras as the confetti falls in NRG Stadium next January, I might be a little insulted.
Yet here we are, undeterred. Let’s observe some facts. One: A 3-peat is unprecedented. No team in the modern history of the “national championship” has won 3 consecutive titles under any widely recognized system. (By “modern” I mean since the advent of the AP poll in 1936; I don’t want to hear anything about retroactive crowns claimed years after the fact.) Winning 2 in a row is rare enough that only a small handful of teams have even had the chance. Among that exclusive club, the Leinart/Bush-era dynasty at USC from 2003-05 is the only one that has seriously threatened to pull it off, coming up just short in the classic January, 2006 Rose Bowl with one of the most stacked rosters of all-time. In a sport with constant turnover, 2 years is the natural lifespan of a championship core.
To extend that point: Georgia lost, among others, its best player, herculean DL Jalen Carter; its face-of-the-program quarterback, Stetson Bennett IV; and its offensive coordinator, Todd Monken, indispensable cogs of both championship runs who will be very difficult to replace in assembly-line fashion. No defending champion has gone back-to-back with a different starting quarterback in Year 2 since Alabama in 1979 (a far less QB-centric era, to put it mildly). Altogether, only 3 starters remain from the 2021 lineup, none of them on defense. The ’23 version shares plenty of its predecessors’ DNA, but it is not the same team.
And as convincing as its closing statement against TCU was in last season’s CFP Championship Game, recall also that Georgia was pushed within half an inch of its life by Ohio State in a come-from-behind, 42-41 win in the Peach Bowl just to get there. Combined with a decisive loss to Bama in the ’21 SEC Championship Game, the notion that the Dawgs have been some kind of invincible monolith in the biggest games, or that their eventual triumph was inevitable, does not quite hold up. Nor are they inevitable in 2023.
Now, does any of that mean they don’t deserve their status as the default No. 1 team in the nation to open the season? Definitely not. Georgia has earned the benefit of the doubt in that position until further notice. Which, given the schedule, is almost certainly not going to arrive for a while. The early nonconference slate consists entirely of chew toys (UT-Martin, Ball State, UAB), and the SEC gauntlet is unusually backloaded, saving the only opponents who cracked the preseason AP poll — No. 22 Ole Miss and No. 12 Tennessee — for the home stretch in November. Auburn and Florida are in various stages of rebuilding; Georgia Tech is Georgia Tech; Alabama, LSU, and Texas A&M are conspicuously absent. The Dawgs will only play 4 true road games, with only a Nov. 18 trip to Knoxville looming as a legitimate test. That gives them nearly the entire regular season to resolve any question marks and iron out any wrinkles.
Who’s going to beat them? Your guess is as good as mine. The other heavy hitters awaiting in the postseason all have their fair share of question marks and wrinkles, too. A random midseason ambush is always a possibility (as Georgia fans know well), but by definition one that no one sees coming in advance. It’s up to the South Carolinas and Missouris of the world to convince themselves they can be that team, not anybody on the outside to believe it. In the meantime, UGA will continue to be the clear betting favorite every time out.
I mean, if it were easier to do, somebody would have already done it in the interim since Minnesota pulled it of in 1926 1936, right? (And, really, when you dig down into what he’s written, it’s not like he’d be exactly surprised if the Dawgs managed to pull it off, despite the history.)
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