Here’s something you can expect to happen a lot over the next 48 hours:
No. 3-ranked UGA will be penalized and criticized by the national media because the Bulldogs didn’t beat Notre Dame convincingly enough as the national media had predicted.
Notre Dame will get more credit for losing a close game on the road rather than UGA will for actually winning a big game.
Crazy, huh?
ESPN’s Kirk Herbstreit is arguably college football’s top influencer, and he got the narrative rolling in the wee hours of Sunday morning when he tweeted out his top four. UGA dropped out of Herbstreit’s top four last week, and they stayed that way this week — despite the fact that Bulldogs had just defeated a top-10 opponent in No. 7 Notre Dame.
But it was Herbstreit’s next tweet that stirred up UGA fans – where he focused more on Notre Dame’s gaining “national respect” for their “willingness to play in a heavyweight brawl” on the road, as opposed to elongated praise for the Bulldogs for pulling out the clutch win, despite not playing at their best (Herbie did throw UGA a small bone with the “great win” comment, if that counts for much).
Herbstreit is one of the first college football influencers to spin that narrative, but he won’t be the last within the next couple of days. For UGA, it’s a tough position because the Bulldogs never said they would win big – that was Las Vegas and the national media.
