LOS ANGELES — Try to pick the moment when Georgia became the standard for college football.
Whatever your answer, it wasn’t Monday when the No. 1 Bulldogs won their second straight College Football Playoff National Championship and stripped not only their opponent, but the rest of the sport of all hope.
What else to say in what qualified as the biggest defeat ever in a national title game?
Georgia scored nine touchdowns, won by more than eight touchdowns against overmatched No. 3 TCU and sent a shudder of fear through the other 129 FBS teams reading something like this: Don’t even think about it.
After losing a record 15 players to the NFL Draft, surviving a trip to Missouri (of all places) and being down two touchdowns in the CFP semifinals, Georgia had no doubts. That and a trail of sacrifices 17 games long standing as the nation’s leading winning streak.
None of that begins to describe what happened Monday night in L.A. The result was so complete that quarterback Stetson Bennett IV was almost a sidebar. Almost. The sixth-year former walk-on completed an improbable career with an all-time performance: four passing touchdowns, two rushing touchdowns and a well-deserved fourth-quarter curtain call.
Talk about a trip. Georgia coach Kirby Smart called a timeout so his old all-time quarterback could do just that before the adoring SoFi Stadium crowd.
Even Bennett had to stand behind the headline after the 65-7 mauling of TCU: Georgia is the first team to win back-to-back national championships in a decade and the first team ever in the CFP era to capture the second by a record margin in an FBS bowl game (58 points). Smart was Nick Saban’s coordinator on the last team to go back-to-back (Alabama, 2011-12).
Where does college football go from here? For now, the answer to that question goes through Athens, Georgia.
“We have a saying around our place: “You have to eat off the floor. If you’re willing to eat off the floor, you can be special,” Smart said.
Gross, but still appropriate. These Dawgs were both of the junkyard variety and dominant breed. Smart harped on his players after winning the 2021 title, reminding them that they were not defending anything. This was a new year. Twenty months ago, Bennett didn’t take a snap in spring practice in 2021. On Monday, he became the sixth quarterback since the 1970s to win consecutive national titles.
Bennett’s only setback in the last week was complaining about the early start to training and not having enough free time. Smart’s response: “You only get one chance to be legendary. I’m not going to leave any regrets out there.”
And so, in the city that invented the three-peat, Georgia made its chance to become the first program to win three straight uncontested national championships in college football. The last to do so at all was Minnesota, which shared its titles as awarded by the media from 1934-36.
Judging by his postgame comments, Smart was already thinking about the possibility.
“The disease that creeps into your program is called ‘entitlement,'” Smart said. “I’ve seen it firsthand, and if you can stomp it out with leadership, you can stay hungry.”
That winning streak might as well stretch to the horizon. Not Alabama, not Clemson, not even close at this point. Georgia is the sport’s new standard.
“I would say it sends the message that Georgia is the new powerhouse in college football,” running back Kendall Milton said.
New? Hardly. Georgia is 33-1 in its last 34 games. Its 29 wins over the past two seasons tie the major college record. Smart is 73-10 since 2017. Bennett leaves after six seasons — five of them at Georgia — and accounted for 15 touchdowns in four playoff games. There was a time he wouldn’t get four snaps in a practice.
Georgia’s 65 points were the most in the championship game era (1998). The margin of victory of 58 points was the most in any bowl game ever.
This despite the fact that the Dawgs entered as the biggest favorites in CFP history (13.5 points, according to Caesars Sportsbook). They covered with 44 points left. At one point early in the third quarter, UGA had run 45 plays and scored 45 points.
But if one needs a turning point, it was perhaps eight years since Smart left one dynasty at Alabama to form another at his alma mater. Therefore, Monday was more of a continuation than a landmark.
Win or lose, there was going to be a dynasty discussion on these Dawgs. Now, the “D” word might as well be etched into the fences at Sanford Stadium. Seven years into his Georgia career, Smart has a better record than Saban did at the same time (81-15 v. 79-15). Smart follows Saban’s 3-2 championship streak in seven years, but that’s a minor detail given the Georgia coach is 24 years younger than his former boss.
Georgia’s stranglehold on the sport looks as tight as the one Alabama once held. On Monday, Georgia knocked Cinderella into a ditch.
“You know how people talk about us being hunted?” RB Kenny McIntosh asked. “We are the hunters. We are not the hunted.”
Every team in the country wants the plan, and they’ll try to get it, too. But Smart has already beefed up the roster, and even his assistants seem to be keeping up.
A tweet went out to Aaron Murray late in the first half. As the Dawgs mopped up the SoFi Stadium turf with various Horned Frogs, reaching the program’s career-leading passer became important.
Please, he was asked, try to put some context into Monday’s back-flogging in the CFP National Championship. First, is Bennett the greatest Georgia quarterback of all time?
“Here he is right!!!” captioned Murray, who Bennett passed as UGA’s single-season passing leader.
Murray added, “Stetson is now the best player in UGA history! Put his resume up against anyone after tonight. It can’t be touched.”
Such an absolute can be argued. Here’s one that’s impossible to argue with: Bennett is finally done. The absurdity of the end for one of college football’s greatest players — he has to be called that now — is that Bennett may never enter the College Football Hall of Fame. It is only served to first-team All-Americans.
“I’ve been here long enough,” he said after the game. “I’m sure there’s some game tape [for NFL teams]. I don’t know — [I’m a] hard worker, pretty good at football, smart. But they’ll see that. I don’t know. It’ll work itself out . Today we are national champions.”
It’s an understatement to say Bennett has his whole life ahead of him, thought he’s at least the second-oldest quarterback to win a national championship since Chris Weinke led Florida State to a title in 1999 at age 27.
Lamar Jackson of the Baltimore Ravens was born the same year as Bennett, 1997. Jackson just completed his fifth NFL season. Former UCLA star Josh Rosen, also 25, is playing for his seventh NFL team with the Detroit Lions.
Smart found his 10-year-old son Andrew crying in his bowels at SoFi Stadium after the game.
“Why are you crying?” Smart asked “You’re going to ruin my moment. [He told me:] ‘Stetson is leaving. Stetson is gone.’ I said, “He’s 25 years old, he’s got to go.”
Next up is a group of as many as 15 returning starters. Georgia enters 2023 as the preseason No. 1. There will be new stories to be written.
“Once you get to college, it doesn’t matter,” said QB Carson Beck, a redshirt freshman who will compete for the starting job next season. “When you first get on campus, everybody’s a dawg — especially at the University of Georgia.”
If not for a fourth quarter rally down by two touchdowns in the Peach Bowl semifinal against No. 4 Ohio State, this would not have happened. If Bennett didn’t complete his last six passes of that game to win it in the final seconds, this certainly wouldn’t have happened.
Will it ever end? Not soon. Not with 2,023 non-conference games against UT-Martin, Ball State and UAB to kick off next season. Not with Georgia’s first road game coming Sept. 30 at Auburn.
Face it: It might be worth getting some action with your favorite playbook on the three-peat.
Bear Bryant’s Alabama came close in 1966. Saban’s Alabama was destroyed by the Kick Six in 2013.
The way this is trending, Georgia could single-handedly crack the idea of a 12-team playoff. Why bother? The championship was the SEC’s 13th in the last 17 years. After 41 years without one, Georgia has now waved the market on national titles.
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