I get the hot take, click bait sense of purpose here…
#Georgia hired Scott Cochran expecting him to have the sort of impact on recruiting an relationships that former UGA staffer Nick Williams may be having at Texas A&M as a defensive analyst https://t.co/UWb6YEpLuW
3. UGA squanders the most talent in college football.
Farrell’s take: FACT. I asked this question on Twitter and the overwhelming response was Georgia. While I don’t think this is a runaway for the Bulldogs, I do have to agree. UGA hasn’t won a national title since 1980 despite a massive in-state recruiting advantage and stellar recruiting classes under many coaches. Maybe Kirby Smart will break through and win it all, and he has had success in the SEC East, but a national title is expected with so much talent. The same was true for UGA under Mark Richt and others. USC, Texas, Miami and others were also common answers, but clearly they have won it all much more recently than Georgia.
Best bet — Georgia (+250): Chill out, Bama fans. This isn’t a slight against your program. But this Georgia squad is in the perfect spot to waltz through the SEC East, into the SEC Championship Game and out of Mercedes-Benz Stadium as conference champions. Coach Kirby Smart has one of the top quarterbacks in the conference in JT Daniels, one of the best running back rooms in the country, a highly-talented offensive line and a defense that has become a force in college football. That doesn’t mean that I’m going to pick the Bulldogs to win their first title since 2017. But getting them at +250 is an extremely low-risk, high-reward investment.
Worst wager — Florida (+1200): The defending SEC East champs are picked to be Georgia’s biggest threat, but a bet on the Gators will be more of a long shot than a responsible investment. Florida has to break in new quarterback Emory Jones, it has an average offensive line and rushing attack, and its defense — at last check — is still coordinated by the much-maligned Todd Grantham. What’s more, Dan Mullen’s crew gets Alabama as its rotating SEC West opponent and has to go to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to take on LSU in its permanent cross-division rivalry game. The Gators are much closer to being third in the East this season than they are to being first.
I can’t say I admire Kanell, but I have to admit, when it comes to dogging the SEC, the man is relentless.
The SEC gets such favored treatment due to the Top 25 rankings. It’s unreal how well they market teams in ALL sports and it always gifts them chances for titles. The latest example??
That’s a fucking comment about college baseball. I guess the mere thought of Alabama triggers a Pavlovian response from the guy.
By the way, it appears Kanell is honing in on a program we know and love.
Coaches should value character as much as star ratings. Selling your soul just to get talent with checkered pasts can be risky….but I guess at some point you just throw caution to the wind…Go Dawgs!!!
Pretty interesting….the line in the Clemson vs UGa game has not budged. Clemson still favored to win by 3. Nor did Alabama's odds to win the SEC. Still the favorite.
So I guess championships are not given out in June.
The best quarterback in the SEC is a signal-caller who has only thrown 22 passes in college: Alabama’s Bryce Young. No, he doesn’t have the track record (yet), but he’s also the No. 2 overall recruit from the Class of 2020 and the sixth-best QB recruit of all-time, per 247Sports. It may take him a few games to get up to speed, but as we’ve seen the last few years with Tua Tagovailoa and Mac Jones, Alabama is built to create star quarterbacks. And they’ve never had a quarterback recruit like Young before. Even with the departure of two first-round receivers and a first-round running back, tight end, and offensive tackle, Young will have plenty of talent surrounding him to help put up a Heisman campaign.
So, after reading that, I’ve got a question: in a few years, will people be criticizing Nick Saban for not benching Jones to start Young instead?
There are quibbles — quite a few, as a matter of fact — I could make with some of their individual projections, but as a overall assessment of talent, it’s fair to say there are two teams and then there’s the rest of the SEC.
The wise heads at CBSSports have gazed upon the visage of Kirby Smart, and found him lacking.
7
Georgia
Kirby Smart: We’re starting to see our voters reach the point where Kirby needs to show them more. He advanced to the College Football Playoff National Championship in his second season with the Bulldogs and has recruited at an elite level. But the program has stalled a bit in recent seasons and failed to win the SEC East in 2020. It enters the 2021 season as a title contender once again, but you can only be a title contender for so long without winning one before patience wears thin…
Yeah, shmuck. What have you done for us lately?
Ahead of Smart on that list are the likes of Brian Kelly and Lincoln Riley, who share two things in common: neither has won a national title and both have lost to Kirby Smart. For some reason, they apparently don’t need to show them more.
Kind of a puzzling rationale to this piece about the next SEC coach who can beat Nick Saban. The premise is that, other than Auburn, the only teams to beat Alabama in the past five seasons featured top quarterbacks.
Okay, fine. Malzahn’s gone, TAMU and Florida are breaking in new starting quarterbacks, LSU is rolling the dice with a new offensive coordinator who’s trying to figure out whom to start at QB and Ole Miss doesn’t have enough defense to make Matt Corral relevant in the discussion.
For better or worse, you’d think that would leave Georgia as the last team standing. Wrong, bacon breath.
But Smart has struggled to develop quarterbacks, a useful ingredient to beating Saban.
Under Smart, who is 0-3 against Saban, Georgia has resembled an old-school version of Saban’s Alabama teams.
Now, don’t get me wrong here. I’m a member of the school that says I’ll believe an SEC coach can beat Saban when I see him actually beat Saban. But is it too much to ask to keep up with the here and now?
“When I was playing college football, my priorities were girls, football and then school,” said Mark Richt, who led the football programs at Georgia and Miami before he retired from coaching in 2018. “Now it’s going to be money, girls, football, school.” — New York Times, 5/8/21
