Maybe we need a Champions League, starring the SEC
Georgia's merciless romp in the College Football Playoff continues a pattern.
It was the strongest argument yet for a one-team playoff.
The biggest problem with the College Football Playoff championship game Monday night was that it was played in the soggy apathy of Los Angeles. Well, that, and the absence of UGA X, the 9-year-old Bulldog mascot whose health is no longer appropriate for such flights.
Was the final score a problem? Maybe to the TV advertisers, and certainly to the TCU contingent. But it also was an example of a great college football team operating at full capacity. Georgia’s 65-7 win fulfilled the purpose of the CFP, as well as one of the many mantras chanted by coach Kirby Smart: Leave no doubt. It did exactly that, in a sport where the title was allowed to sit there, unresolved, not so many years ago.
TCU began the game with a false-start penalty. “I think we were a little wide-eyed,” coach Sonny Dykes said. That’s strange, because the Horned Frogs’ previous two games were at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Tex. and in State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Az., both full of fans.
What was different at SoFi Stadum? A parade of red-shirted behemoths who looked like a Marvel Comics version of the teams TCU had beaten in the Big 12. Perhaps the Horned Frogs were beaten in pre-game warmups. When you break the huddle and you’re confronting Jalen Carter (6-foot-3, 300) and Nazir Stackhouse (6-foot-3, 320) and freshman Mykel Williams (6-foot-5, 265), you’re not thinking this is the U.S. vs. Russia at Lake Placid. You’re thinking this is big trouble, a upset-proof situation.
Georgia’s ultimate weapon was the 5-foot-10 Stetson Bennett IV, who looks like he belongs in a John Hughes movie but became the first quarterback since Alabama’s A.J. McCarron to win back-to-back championships. The Bulldogs scored on every first-half possession and on four of five in the second half.
Their 58-point margin was an alltime bowl record, regardless of fruit or crop or corporate sponsor. They got those 65 points on 72 plays, they outgained TCU 589-188, they averaged 8.2 yards per play, they were 9 for 13 on third downs, etc., etc. etc.
“We’ve probably had three false starts all year on probably over a thousand plays,” Dykes said. “We’re not that kind of football team. You could sense some tension in the room. We weren’t in the state of mind that we needed to be in.”
The state of their defense was unchanged. The Horned Frogs came in with the 80th-ranked defense in the country. They had solved that by outscoring people, with wins of 43-40, 41-31, 42-34 and 38-28, but that’s not happening against Georgia, and offensive coordinator Garrett Riley seemed to indicate that when he began the game with three consecutive passes, all incomplete. They aren’t that kind of football team either.
Weeks ago, Smart got his scout team together and told its members to become facsimiles of the TCU defense. "I said, we’e going to do it better than they do it,” Smart said. “And they gave us an unbelievable look. That set our offense up for success.”
Georgia is now 29-1 over the past two seasons. The only loss was to Alabama in the 2021 SEC championship game, and the Bulldogs settled that in last year’s CFP final. There are four seniors among the starting 22, and even though a significant number of juniors, like Carter, will move into the draft, there are nine sophomores and freshmen who start. The non-conference slate in 2023 consists of Tennessee-Martin, Ball State and UAB, and Georgia does not play Alabama or LSU. So, as long as Georgia can replace Bennett, this old sweet song will keep playing.
Georgia does have a late road trip to Tennessee, which throttled ACC champion Clemson, 31-14, in the (very) Orange Bowl. Georgia, LSU, Alabama and Tennessee won five postseason games by a combined score of 246-89, and the five losing teams had a combined record of 54-12 going in. SEC teams are 14-3 in the nine-year-old CFP and have six championships. No other conference has a winning record in this 4-team tournament.
The reasons are self-explanatory. The SEC sits on the deepest lode of high school talent in America, despite the fact that St. John Bosco and Mater Dei in southern California have the top two programs. It also drums up the most money, through its TV deals and its torrent of donorships. As a recent ESPN.com story pointed out, the Bulldogs spent $7 million on football recruiting from 2016 to 2018 and not only spent big for assistant coaches but covered their buyouts when necessary. The president of the university talked to visiting recruits on Saturday mornings, and each recruit was greeted by a Georgia representative, usually a coach, who stayed by his side during the whole visit. There are no small details.
These days, Georgia skims the best in-state talent off the top and then expands its range. Tight end Brock Bowers, who will be a darkhorse Heisman candidate in 2023, is from Napa, Ca. Cornerback Kelee Ringo went to high school in Tucson. Tight end Darnell Washington, who is 6-foot-7, is from Las Vegas. The Bulldogs did not bring one soul through the transfer portal over the winter, even though they lost five defensive starters in the first round of the NFL draft.
The dimensions of this win immediately triggered the critics of the 4-team format. Their puzzling argument is that the 65-7 score proved a 12-team bracket will better identify a champion. Forget trying to figure that out. Just remember the 2021 NCAA basketball title game in which Baylor spanked Gonzaga, 86-70. There were no calls to expand the tournament field to 128 or whatever.
Neither did anyone claim that Gonzaga didn’t deserve to be there, maybe because the Zags were undefeated at the time. Blowouts happen. Nebraska won a de facto title game over Florida, 62-24. USC won a BCS title game over Oklahoma, 55-19. Alabama won a CFP over Notre Dame, 42-14. It didn’t indicate a flaw in the same system that produced consecutive championship-game scores of 45-40, 35-31 and 26-23 in overtime from 2015 through 2017.
The other post-SoFi howl is on behalf of Alabama. Aren’t they better than TCU? Probably, but the Tide lost two games, at Tennessee and at LSU, which would subsequently lose to a non-bowl Texas A&M squad.
This is why they play the games, as Dick Stockton said on CBS after Villanova jolted Georgetown for the 1985 NCAA title. Sure, you could sketch in Georgia, Alabama, Ohio State and maybe USC for next year’s CFP and not even play the regular season. That would certainly save a lot of aggravation, expense and injury. But that’s not how it works in the wide, wide world of sports, and, besides, this same TCU team beat Michigan on New Year’s Eve.
Georgia, or a team very close by, will have the edge in college football even if you devise a system that includes 64 college teams plus Arsenal, the Houston Astros and the Harlem Globetrotters. Greatness stops by our corner of the world so rarely. We should study it appreciatively, with eyes widened.