Granted, No. 1 Georgia looked on the verge Saturday of sprinting toward a third national championship in four years. With barking from their followers throughout Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta, the Bulldogs smashed No. 14 Clemson 34-3, but you know what?
It was just one game.
It also was the season opener for both teams.
That said . . .
Georgia may never lose again.
If nothing else, the Bulldogs will keep stringing together victories through this regular season, and perhaps longer.
OK, that’s a bit much, but all things are possible for your college football program when you’re nearly guaranteed to pocket the estimated $3 million to $5 million going to everybody in the new 12-team College Football Playoff, and when you can make the case for having each of the following:
The best coach (Kirby Smart, who is 95-16 during his eight seasons at Georgia, with two national championships and a 9-2 record in bowl games).
The best offensive coordinator (Mike Bobo, who spent his first coaching stint at Georgia turning Matthew Stafford into the No. 1 overall pick in the 2009 NFL Draft as a quarterback and who is trending toward doing the same with Carson Beck in the 2025 NFL Draft).
The best defensive coordinator (Glenn Schumann, who has been a part of three consecutive Top Five defenses, including the Jordan Davis bunch of 2021 that held foes to a modern-day record of 6.9 points per game).
The best quarterback (Beck, see Bobo above, and Beck is among the top Heisman Trophy candidates).
The best defensive player (or at least the best defensive back, especially since Malaki Starks has the early lead for Defensive Play of the Year in the Secondary with his running, leaping and backwards grab of an interception against Clemson).
The best talent to complement the best quarterback and the best defender (The Bulldogs are guaranteed their ninth consecutive Top Five recruiting class under Smart).
Now consider: Even though this isn’t the Clemson program that made six consecutive trips to the playoffs through 2020, the current Tigers are solid enough to capture the ACC championship and to send its usual massive collection of players to the NFL Draft, especially on defense.
Then consider: Trevor Etienne is Georgia’s first-string running back, but he was suspended for the Clemson game by the university for an arrest earlier this spring on DUI and reckless driving charges.
Then consider: Against Clemson, Georgia had seven penalties for 70 yards; Beck wasn’t always his vintage self as the master of pinpoint passes; and the Bulldogs only led 6-0 at halftime.
In sum, without their A Game, Smart’s latest collection of future NFL Pro Bowlers still crushed a pretty good Clemson team by more than four touchdowns with something like their B-minus Game.
“It was a good first half. Tough, hard-fought first half. Then they just freaking kicked our tails in the second half,” said Clemson coach Dabo Swinney, owner of two national championships during his 17 seasons with the Tigers. “Congrats to them. They’re a great team. They’ve been a great team.”
The Bulldogs are so great that they’ve won 43 of their last 45 games, including 40 in a row during the regular season. That’s the stuff of those Oklahoma teams with a 47-game winning streak from 1953 to 1957.
Actually, Georgia’s streak is more impressive.
Unlike Oklahoma, Georgia is dominating during the era of the transfer portal (which essentially is free agency without the salary cap), and Name, Licensing and Image (NIL) deals that can distrupt a locker room in a flash.
That means rosters are constantly evolving.
Despite it all, Smart has gone weeks, months and years keeping his players and coaches focused on winning — no matter the opponent, the venue, the circumstances (on and off the field, where a slew of other Bulldogs have joined Etienne with driving-related arrests) or anything else.
What’s the key to Georgia’s ability to keep “the main thing the main thing” as Kirby and his players like to say?
“I think it’s a process. We believe in what we do. The leaders on our team that I meet with, they believe in it, they sell it, they push it to the younger players,” Kirby told me after the Clemson game when I asked him the question.
“I think somebody said the other day we had 38 or 42 my advisor brought to me. We had 42 or 38, I can’t remember what it was. I had to sign something saying they were all eligible and they were all new. We had 38 or 42 new people. New.
Kirby was just getting started, adding, “When you turn over that much, you’d better have a nucleus around them that can keep them grounded. That is what we’ve been able to sustain at Georgia is, we’re not going to change what we do based on who we play. We’re going to do what we do and we’re going to try to out-execute you and just do it the right way.
“I think a lot of people that’s hard to do it the hard way all the time, because everybody wants to find an easier way. There’s no easy way to win these games. They’re all hard.”
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