No SEC championship game but first-round CFP bye? Georgia football could get there at 11-1
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Georgia football knows its going to Mercedes-Benz Stadium to play a team currently ranked in the top 15 on Thanksgiving weekend.
Another game in Atlanta on the same field against a higher-ranked team could come a week after that Nov. 28 matchup with Georgia Tech.
So Bulldog fans, with Georgia considered a near-lock for the College Football Playoff, do you want your team to go to the SEC championship game or would you be fine watching Texas A&M and Alabama battle it out instead?
Such is the state of play nowadays when the 12-team College Football Playoff is everything and a conference championship game is for a trophy and TV ratings.
Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin said the quiet part out loud last season about the SEC championship game: “I’ve talked to other coaches, so I’ll just kind of give you the feeling from some other coaches that they don’t want to be in it.”
He didn’t name which coaches but he’s tight with Georgia’s Kirby Smart, who he is on a text chain with along with others.
Kiffin said last season the worry was getting knocked out of the playoff with a third loss wasn’t worth the benefit of getting a first-round bye for being SEC champions.
“And it’s not just, do you potentially get knocked out by losing that?” Kiffin said. “Do you go get more injuries? So you’re going to go get more injuries, play another game to get a bye, but then the other people are having their bye while you’re playing [in the conference championship game.]”
Smart, on Monday, Nov. 17, was asked if how he and his coaching colleagues look at reaching the championship game changed given that Ohio State and Notre Dame played for the national title last year without playing in a championship game. Both advanced out of first-round games.
“My objective is to win every game we play,” Smart said. “So where does that put us? It puts us in that game, right? There would be no way I would ever look at not playing in that game. We can’t do that. Got to look at the opportunity to go play and win a conference championship that has eluded more programs and has been as rare to win in some cases as a national championship.”
Smart was born in Alabama and grew up in Georgia and coached in the SEC championship as a Georgia assistant and head coach and an Alabama defensive coordinator. So he’s always spoke highly of playing on that stage.
“To talk about the future and what that holds, I can’t even speculate what that holds,” he said. “To talk about the way our coaches look, regardless of how they look at it, how are they going to perform on the field on Saturdays? They’re going to perform to win which puts you in that game.”
Georgia loved celebrating with the confetti falling and hanging a 2024 SEC championship banner after beating Texas in overtime last December, but it did come with a cost.
Starting quarterback Carson Beck sustained an elbow injury that forced Gunner Stockton into the game and knocked Beck out of the playoff last season.
Georgia got a playoff bye but lost to Notre Dame 23-10 in the Sugar Bowl.
It isn’t a large sample size but in year one of the 12-team playoff, the top four seeds all were one and done, losing in the quarterfinals.
Top-ranked Oregon also lost to No. 8 Ohio State 41-21, No. 3 Boise State was dropped by No. 6 Penn State 31-14 and No. 4 Arizona State was downed by No. 5 Texas 39-31.
Ohio State, which did not play in the Big Ten championship game, won four playoff games to win the national championship. It beat Tennessee, Oregon, Texas and Notre Dame.
Of course this year, the playoff committee is doing a straight seeding for the top four seeds so a Boise State or Arizona State wouldn’t have landed the first-round byes under that scenario.
SEC commissioner Greg Sankey, speaking Saturday to reporters in the Sanford Stadium press box before Georgia’s 35-10 victory over Texas, said of the SEC championship game: “We have a championship game that’s been the model, and it still is. Nobody has accepted the trophy from me over the last 10 seasons with a frown on their face. Remember all that conversation about, ‘We need to decide things on the field.’ Remember that? That still applies.”
Georgia, which hosts Charlotte on Saturday, finished SEC play at 7-1.
Unbalanced schedules in megaconferences like the SEC mean a team like Texas A&M is 7-0 in the SEC but hasn’t played the next top five ranked teams in the conference in the coaches poll: No. 4 Georgia, No. 6 Ole Miss, No. 8 Oklahoma, No. 10 Alabama and No. 13 Vanderbilt.
It will play No. 18 Texas to close out the regular season.
A Texas A&M loss to Texas or an Alabama loss to Auburn would mean Georgia will play for the SEC championship. The Bulldogs also could get in based on a tiebreaker for cumulative SEC opponent winning percentage if Ole Miss beats Mississippi State and Alabama and Texas win their remaining SEC games.
An 11-1 Georgia would still be in good position to get a first-round playoff bye as a top 4 seed, which is where the Bulldogs could move up to when the third CFP rankings come out Tuesday.
If Georgia was No. 5 in the final rankings on Dec. 7, a first ever home playoff game in Sanford Stadium against a team like Navy or Tulane could be on tap on Dec. 19 or 20.
Smart has said he worries about everything.
That could be a long layoff if Georgia doesn’t make the SEC championship game and has to wait nearly five weeks to play again, perhaps against Texas Tech.
Georgia players, for their part, would be happy to play in another SEC championship game.
“To be able to play in that game,” tight end Oscar Delp said, “is super special.”
This article originally appeared on Athens Banner-Herald: Kirby Smart still values SEC title game trips even in expanded playoff
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