We just witnessed a murder on live television. I've been watching sports for my whole life, and I've never seen a massacre in a championship game, in any sport, like we saw in Georgia's 65-7 win over TCU to repeat as the College Football Playoff national champions. I wanted to share just a few brief thoughts regarding this game, which turned out to be much more lopsided than almost anyone could have expected. 1. The 2022-23 Georgia Bulldogs have entered into the conversation for greatest college football team of all time. We've literally never seen a performance like this in a college football championship game. Prior to last night, the biggest margin of defeat in a championship game came in 1996, when the #1 Nebraska Cornhuskers defeated the #2 Florida Gators 62-24, a 38-point differential. Georgia nearly reached that differential by halftime, dominating the entire way to eventually win by a whopping 58 points. In fact, it was the largest margin of victory in any bowl game ever(!), topping Tulsa's 63-7 win over Bowling Green in the 2008 GMAC Bowl, a game which I'm sure no one has forgotten.
This performance, combined with the Bulldogs' resumé from Week 1 of the regular season, cement their place among college football's greatest squads. They showed signs of vulnerability over the course of the season in narrow wins against weaker teams such as Kent State, Missouri, and Kentucky, but Georgia always came through when it mattered most against the toughest teams on their schedule. They demoralized #11 Oregon 49-3 in the opening week, defeated #1 Tennessee 27-13 in impressive fashion, hung 50 points on #14 LSU in a runaway SEC Championship Game, and pulled off an improbable win in crunch time in the CFP semifinals against #4 Ohio State. And all of this led to their 65-7 stomping of #3 TCU in the CFP final. Georgia's defense struggled a bit more than it did last year, but that's to be expected when you lose eight defensive starters to the NFL draft (five of which taken in the first round). Still, as we saw last night, when the defense is on, it's on. And coupled with the best offensive skill group in the country and a veteran dual-threat quarterback in his 18th college season, it's hard to imagine many teams in college football history competing with this year's Bulldogs. I'd love to see a matchup between this Georgia team and the 2019 LSU Tigers. That would have made for an incredible championship game. 2. The SEC is still clearly the best conference in college football. And it's not close. There's always a bunch of talk about how teams in other Power 5 conferences would fare in the SEC, and after a performance such as this, it's fair to put that question to bed. I normally wouldn't hold one game in such high regard, as flukes do happen. But if you lose by 58 points, it's safe to say that you are significantly underpowered. TCU, as great of a season as they had, would likely be the fourth or fifth best team (and that's being generous) in the SEC this year. And keep in mind that they got into this game by beating the Big 10's champion, Michigan, in their semifinal playoff game. It's also worth noting that the team TCU lost to in the Big 12 Championship, Kansas State, was trounced by Alabama 45-20 in the Sugar Bowl. The truth is that the best football in the country is played in the Southeastern Conference, and for some reason, every season, people want to believe that the tide is changing (no pun intended). In reality, the SEC has been continuing to prove its dominance since the BCS began in 1998. After last night's win by Georgia, the SEC has now won the last four CFP national titles (by three different teams), six of the last eight CFP titles, and 13 of the last 17 championships. A hilarious statistic is that the Big 10 lost more CFP semifinal games on one day (December 31, 2022) than the SEC has lost in the nine seasons of the CFP's existence. Georgia's destruction of TCU helped to solidify the SEC's prowess for yet another season of college football. 3. The 12-team playoff can't get here soon enough This is exactly why the playoff expansion is necessary. Everyone with a brain who had watched college football this season knew that Michigan, TCU, and Ohio State were not among the best four teams in the country going into the playoff. And man, was last night's game a rough look for the CFP Committee. For the record, as the format stands now, I understand that you have to select the four teams that are most deserving over what some may call the best four teams. I don't like that that's the case, but to do otherwise would make the regular season entirely meaningless. With that said, my four playoff teams as of Selection Sunday would have been as follows:
This is a bit of a mixture of the two principles of most deserving versus best quality. Georgia and Michigan had obviously secured their spots as undefeated teams, and although I didn't think TCU was a better team than some of the others in contention, I agreed with them getting in as the 3-seed despite losing in the Big 12 Championship game. The only real argument was between who would get the 4-slot between Ohio State, Tennessee, and Alabama. My argument was that Ohio State's performance in their final game against Michigan combined with the fact that they had a weak strength of schedule allowed both two-loss Tennessee and Alabama, who played much tougher slates of game, to jump them. Between those two, Tennessee owned the head-to-head and would be rewarded the final seat in the playoffs. But even that reasoning, or any reasoning for that matter, can't justify omitting one of the four best teams in football from the postseason tournament, regardless of how the season went. The true issue of the four-team format is that you can't exactly tell how good each team is in respect to other teams in other conferences unless you have a head-to-head reference, which is rare for most of the top contenders. It turns out, Michigan's resumé was inflated by a very week schedule, with their only real test being in their regular season finale against Ohio State. And that showed when they gave up 51 points in a loss to TCU, who could only muster 7 points against Georgia's first, second, third, and fourth string lineups. Some people have argued that a 12-team playoff is unnecessary because there are usually only two or three teams that have any chance of actually winning a championship each season. And that may be true. But the beauty of the expansion will be in ensuring that all teams with a legitimate shot to win it will almost assuredly be included in the tournament. And don't be surprised when we see four SEC teams battling it out in the Final Four one season, which a lot of national media will absolutely hate. 4. For Georgia, this is exactly how you build a dynasty As I alluded to above, Georgia was winning so dominantly that they were able to give their backups significant playing time in the national championship. I mean, Stetson Bennett was pulled at the beginning of the fourth quarter, and he could have received his send-off much earlier. The whole fourth quarter consisted of each member of the Bulldogs' starting lineup on both sides of the ball exiting the game to a standing ovation for the Georgia faithful in attendance. And this is the same formula that Nick Saban has employed to establish his dynasty at Alabama. Every year at Alabama, and now at Georgia, you think how it would be possible for a team to replace so much talent that has been lost to the NFL draft. And while winning in that kind of fashion on national TV is sure to help in recruiting and the transfer portal, I think the biggest benefit to a team that already has massive exposure is getting your backups a chance to play in big time atmospheres against Power 5 talent. Georgia has been beating teams in and out of conference so bad that second teamers are playing in the second half, and third and fourth stringers have entered by the fourth quarter. Which is exactly what happened last night. And the fact that you can do that in a national championship game is just silly. Unfortunately for the rest of the country, Kirby Smart was already looking ahead to next season for the final quarter or so of last night's game. And the fact that you have time to plan for future seasons while playing in the CFP National Title means Georgia won't be going anywhere any time soon. Final Thoughts We can only hope that going forward, some other teams ascend to attempt to rival the Bulldogs other than just Alabama or maybe Ohio State, which I think will happen. However, I think most of Georgia's potential demise will come from within the conference and the grind of an SEC schedule. The 12-team playoff will help ensure that the best two teams are actually fighting for the trophy in the title game, which will hopefully prevent another decimation like this year's championship was. Congratulations to Georgia for winning the 2022-23 CFP National Title for the second year in a row in utter dominant fashion. The Bulldogs were the best team in football from start to finish and it's safe to say that there will be no dispute to who owns the championship trophy this season. Credit to TCU for making it there, but you've learned you can't swim with the big sharks yet. Now, we'll turn our attention to the NFL postseason for a few weeks before awaiting the return of college football eight long months from now. Written by Nick Swatson
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