Congratulations, Georgia football, you are locked into the SEC championship game against either Texas or Texas A&M.
You are one of the two top teams from the conference that has won six of the last nine national titles.
Woo-hoo. College Football Playoff here come the Dawgs!
Probably. Almost certainly, right?
A 10-3 team that lost in its championship game wouldn’t be left out of the 12-team playoff right?
Cue the CFP selection chairman, Warde Manuel.
“We’re not going to speculate on what will happen, but we have a lot of value for the teams that make a championship game,” Manuel, the Michigan athletic director, told ESPN’s Rece Davis last Tuesday on the weekly top 25 rankings show. “That says a lot, playing 12 games in a season. Making your championship game is a really valuable data point.”
First things first, Georgia needs to take care of business against Georgia Tech Saturday. OK, it really doesn’t but won’t want to risk it.
Lose to the 19 ½-point underdog Yellow Jackets and the Bulldogs can still grab the SEC’s automatic first-round bye and a trip to the Sugar Bowl by winning in Atlanta on Dec. 7 in a 4 p.m. game.
Smael Mondon knew it was a possibility for Georgia to land in the SEC championship game, but couldn’t have expected the Bulldogs to clinch. They did after Saturday night upsets in the league.
“I just didn’t really think it was going to happen,” the senior inside linebacker said. “I woke up in the middle of the night. I guess I couldn’t really go to sleep. I got on my phone and saw it then. I was surprised, but really excited.”
UGA students got emails Monday morning about SEC championship tickets for $80.
“It’s a great honor to play in the SEC championship game,” coach Kirby Smart said Monday after first saying he’s focused on Georgia Tech. “It’s probably one of the greatest events in all of sports because the games that you play in are great matchups, but at this point in time, we don’t even know who that is nor do I care.”
Georgia has a 95 percent win probability against the 7-4 Yellow Jackets, according to ESPN SP+.
Beating Georgia Tech probably punches a playoff ticket for Georgia after the belly flops Saturday of Ole Miss ( at Florida), Alabama (at Oklahoma) and Texas AM (at Auburn).
After all, Georgia has wins over the other SEC teams considered in the 12-team bracket before this weekend: Texas and Tennessee.
Georgia has a 91 percent chance to make the playoff according to ESPN and 92 percent chance to get in, according to the Athletic.
The Bulldogs also have a win over Clemson, a team ranked in the top 20.
Oregon and Alabama have three top 25 wins, but the Crimson Tide’s 24-3 faceplant to the Sooners probably knocked the 8-3 Tide out.
The Bulldogs won’t have to face a Crimson Tide team in Atlanta that it lost to in September and a program it lost to in the SEC championship game in 2018, 2021 and 2023 under Nick Saban.
Georgia is going to the SEC championship game without an 8-0 or 7-1 record for the first time since the 2005 Bulldogs were 6-2 and won the title by beating LSU. That says something about the gauntlet of a schedule the Bulldogs were dealt this year.
LSU in 2022 and Florida in 2016 went with a 6-2 record and South Carolina in 2010 at 5-3. They all lost.
Tennessee and LSU played in 2007 with 6-2 records.
Georgia players said Georgia Tech is the task at hand.
Offensive guard Dylan Fairchild turned to a proverb to put it in perspective: “You can’t eat an elephant all at once. You’ve got to eat it one bite at a time.”
