The final piece of confetti had barely settled onto the field inside Lucas Oil Stadium following Georgia’s triumphant 33-18 championship victory over Alabama before odds were released for next season: Alabama 13/4 Georgia 7/2.
In what has become college football’s biggest certainty, an SEC team will likely play for, and win it all next year too. As Pat Forde once famously said ” You don’t like it? Get better.”
They say that champions do not have to be undefeated, but they must be undaunted. For Kirby Smart’s wickedly-talented Georgia Bulldogs the road to a first national championship in 41 years was paved with despair and uncertainty. When Alabama lit up the vaunted Georgia defense in December at the SEC Championship game, the cause began to weaken.
The national narrative quickly switched to: Alabama is elite, everyone else is beatable. Instead of becoming just another sad story, the Bulldogs muscled up and bludgeoned Alabama in the fourth quarter to firmly plant their flag atop college football’s highest summit.
15 year trend features SEC dominance
With Georgia’s victory Monday night, the SEC has now seen five different programs win a title in the past fifteen years. Factoring in Nick Saban’s six championships at Alabama, the SEC has won 12 out of the last 15. Only the ACC (Clemson and Florida State) and the Big 10 (Ohio State) have managed to momentarily dent the iron of the mighty SEC.
While Georgia’s win likely helps cement them as a modern college football blue blood, recent history tells us we won’t have to wait long until another Alabama reign.
College Football’s postseason needs revamping
While winning a national title is still a significant accomplishment, the entire college football postseason is abysmal in its current incarnation. The playoff games taking place on New Years Eve serving as a mere appetizer for the New Year’s 6 bowl games is a major issue. The casual fan doesn’t know what they are seeing and can’t distinguish between which games are important and those that are not and the low ratings bear that out.
The playoff games deserve stand-alone treatment before bowl season even kicks off and it should culminate with the championship on New Years night. While Georgia fans were boisterous heading into the championship game, the rest of the country didn’t seem to care as they had already seen Alabama/Georgia. The whole thing felt anti-climactic and the setting in frozen Indianapolis didn’t seem to help.
