Georgia fans are well accustomed to hearing the “1980″ jokes by this point. That was the last year the Bulldogs won a national championship. In the time since then, conference foes such as Florida, Auburn, LSU, Tennessee and Alabama have all won national titles.
Still, recent years have seen an uptick as Georgia sits closer to the top of college football compared to most other programs. The Bulldogs have finished the season inside the top-10 in each of the past four seasons.
But that recent success still doesn’t make up for the lack of a national championship in the eyes of ESPN’s Adam Rittenberg.
In ranking the biggest underachievers in the sport, Rittenberg placed Georgia in a tier by itself at the top.
“Georgia is the inspiration for the underachiever tiers,” Rittenberg wrote.
Other teams who earned their way onto Rittenberg’s list include Texas, Texas A&M, Michigan, Tennessee and Miami. Other than Texas A&M, four of those schools have won national championships more recently than the Bulldogs.
That’s the single biggest reason Rittenberg has Georgia where he does.
“Georgia’s failure to win a title puts the program in a tier of its own,” Rittenberg wrote.
The Bulldogs once again enter the season as one of the top teams in the country and loaded with talent. Georgia is likely to enter the season with a top-5 ranking.
Georgia also saw a number of key players elect to return for an extra season as opposed to entering the NFL draft. Quarterback JT Daniels and defensive tackle Jordan Davis are the biggest names to know there, but someone like running back James Cook came back as well.
Cook talked specifically about what goals he hopes to accomplish on Friday. One of those was bringing a national championship to the Georgia program.
“All I’m trying to do is win games this year,” Cook said. “Just go out (with) a national championship and SEC championship. That comes when you do the right things.”
We should find out pretty soon if Georgia is a championship-caliber team in 2021 as the Bulldogs open the season against Clemson, another team with national championship aspirations. If the Bulldogs are able to win that game in Charlotte on Sept. 4, the rest of the schedule sets up nicely during the regular season for Georgia to make a run.
Of course, Alabama likely looms in the SEC championship game. The Crimson Tide are perhaps the single biggest reason Georgia has not yet won a national title, as Nick Saban’s team tharwted the Bulldogs in 2012, 2017 and 2018. Time will tell if the Bulldogs are able to silence the many critics who constantly remind Georgia of its national title drought.
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- Georgia football Stock Report: Will Muschamp value soaring, Darnell Washington, Kendall Milton off to strong starts
- How Kirby Smart uses Will Muschamp could say a lot about 2021 Georgia football team
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- 5 things: Georgia football connected, pieces in place to account for Scott Cochran absence
- Georgia’s fearsome defensive front, through the lens of a Clemson offensive lineman
- JT Daniels brings improved confidence, ‘California swag’ into second season at Georgia
- Kirby Smart, Mark Richt share thoughts after the passing of college football legend Bobby Bowden
- Kirby Smart uses ketchup to explain his transfer portal thoughts
