Nick Saban made his College GameDay debut on Saturday morning, as he joined ESPN’s Rece Davis, Kirk Herbstreit, Pat McAfee and Desmond Howard live from Ireland ahead of Georgia Tech’s game against Florida State.
When the topic of the SEC came up, Saban made sure to give the Georgia football program some love, recognizing how well the Bulldogs have played in recent years.
And in doing so, issued a challenge to the rest of the SEC.
“Somebody has to prove they can beat Georgia,” Saban said. “The only people that have beaten Georgia in the last two or three years is Alabama. So somebody has to prove that they can do it.”
To Saban’s point, Georgia is 50-4 in the previous four seasons, with three of those losses coming to Saban’s Alabama teams. The other loss was a 2020 defeat to Dan Mullen’s Florida team.
Saban also picked Georgia to win the national championship this year, as did Pat McAfee.
Beating Georgia in 2024 won’t be an easy task, as the Bulldogs open the season as the No. 1 ranked team in both the AP and Coaches Polls. Georgia also placed a league-best 15 players on the Preseason Coaches All-SEC Team.
But Georgia won’t have an easy path in conference play this season. Georgia has road trips to Texas, Alabama and Ole Miss, who are ranked No. 4, 5 and 6 in the preseason AP Poll, respectively.
The Bulldogs also have tricky non-conference games against Clemson next week in Atlanta, while Georgia ends the season with a home game against Georgia Tech.
Saban praised the Yellow Jackets earlier on the College GameDay broadcast.
“My sleeper though is Georgia Tech. They were in the top three offensively last year in the ACC. They were not very good on defense,” Saban said. “They’ve got a new defensive coordinator, they got some players out of the portal. If they can play defense a little bit better, they give people tremendous headaches.”
Saban did have Georgia as the No. 1 overall team in his projected College Football Playoff. All four panelists had Georgia winning the SEC and earning a first-round bye in new 12-team College Football Playoff.
Georgia opens the 2024 season against Clemson next Saturday at noon ET.