ATHENS — Georgia has won two of the three CFP Championships of the 2020s, but an ESPN paysite article ranks the Bulldogs as only the third best program of the decade.
ESPN author Bill Connelly modified the popular “SP+” formula in a manner “based solely on points scored and allowed …,” which might explain why Kirby Smart’s program doesn’t seem to be getting its fair due.
Fact is, college football has been subject to perception, or “national narrative,” more than any other major sport because the lack of an expanded playoff.
That will change in 2024 with college football going to a 12-team playoff that rewards the four highest-ranked Power 5 champions with a bye.
In 2017, a flaw in the four-team CFP was exposed when an Alabama team that didn’t even play in the SEC title game essentially received a bye, playing one less postseason game than the other three teams in the four-team playoff.
As for outside perceptions, Georgia coach Kirby Smart doesn’t typically worry any more about them than he does how lopsided the scoreboard might get.
Efficiency, along with player and program development, is at the top of Smart’s list.
As the son of a football coach, Smart is also sensitive to opposing coaches and rarely takes advantage of opportunities to run up the score -- even if that would make his team appear more dominant to poll voters or in metric-based rankings.
The Bulldogs have separated themselves the past two seasons in two other key ways:
• Georgia is the only back-to-back CFP Championship Game winners
• Georgia has produced an NFL-record 25 draft picks over the past two years — including a record draft of 15 players, and five-first round picks in 2022.
Still, in this most recent ESPN numbers-game rating system, offensive-minded programs like Alabama and Ohio State appear more dominant per the modified SP+ formula.
It’s not hard to recall the times Smart chose to run the football — rather than continue to air things out and pile up numbers — in the fourth quarter of UGA’s most dominant wins.
One example was the 45-16 win over South Carolina in 2020, then coached by former Gamecocks’ interim and current UGA offensive coordinator Mike Bobo.
Former Georgia quarterback J.T. Daniels, coming off a 400-yard passing performance, threw the ball only 16 times for 139 yards against a depleted Gamecocks’ defense.
Georgia’s final drive saw Daniels hand off to then-fourth-string running back Daijun Edwards 11 of the 12 final plays of the game. The other play was a handoff to former walk-on Prather Hudson.
Oh, and the Bulldogs took a knee at the South Carolina 1-yard line on the final play.
It wasn’t exactly the most metric-friendly victory, but it got the game over quicker with fewer plays, minimizing risk of injuries, as well as Smart showing class to the opponent.
Thus, in the recent ESPN metrics measuring the best teams from every decade, the Crimson Tide came in with a 98.9 score, followed by Ohio State (98.2), Georgia (97.8), Michigan (91.5) and Clemson (91.2).
Per those metrics, the 2020 Alabama team was the best of this 3-year-old decade (99.7) followed by 2022 Georgia (99.4), 2021 Georgia (99.3), 2022 Michigan (98.9) and 2022 Alabama (98.9).
The 2021 Georgia defense (99.0) ranked tops of the 2020s, followed by 2022 Iowa and 2022 Georgia.
As noted above, Smart’s choice to be more efficient than explosive in the fourth quarter of games decided contributed to none of Georgia’s offenses of the 2020s ranking among the top five.
Similarly, Vince Dooley’s 1980s Bulldogs ranked sixth of their decade with only one top-five team despite the Dawgs’ incredible dominance during a 33-3 run between the 1980 national title season and Herschel Walker’s final season in 1982.
Mark Richt’s 2000s Bulldogs ranked sixth among the Top 10 programs of that decade, with one top-five team, while the Bulldogs’ of the 2010s ranked fifth.
