SEC Football: Spring 2019 storylines for every SEC team
Georgia: How does Georgia move from ‘elite’ to No. 1?
Ignoring last season’s Sugar Bowl, Georgia’s season has ended two years in a row in the most excruciatingly heartbreaking of fashions
The Bulldogs have come agonizingly close the last two years to summiting the college football mountain, but at the top both times has been Nick Saban and Alabama to boot them back down into the abyss.
In both games, Georgia has had two-touchdown second half leads that they have been unable to hold on to, losing late advantages on miraculous plays. I don’t need to discuss them further because you know about them well enough already: it’s two of the most iconic moments of the last two seasons, and Georgia has been on the losing side of both.
It seems like only a matter of time before Kirby Smart and Georgia break through and win a National Championship, the program’s first since 1980, but every missed opportunity is tough to swallow when you understand how difficult it is to get that far to begin with. You never know if or when you will be in that position again.
Recruiting suggests that Smart and the Bulldogs are here to stay, as they continue to recruit neck-and-neck with Saban and Alabama. But that was said at the beginning of the Mark Richt era as well after a successful first three seasons, and he could never quite get Georgia over the hump.
The first three seasons of Smart’s tenure at his alma mater look eerily similar to Richt’s:
Smart: 32-10; 2 SEC East titles, 1 SEC title; 1 NY6 win
Richt: 32-8; 2 SEC East titles, 1 SEC title; 1 BCS win
Smart supporters will be quick to point out that Richt never got the Bulldogs to the national title game like Smart did in his second season, but Smart benefited from the playoff era aiding his ability to get them there. Had the playoff been established back in 2002, Georgia would have very likely been in as they finished the regular season ranked No. 4 in both the AP and Coaches Polls. Under the old BCS system, Georgia would have likely been left out in the cold in 2017 behind No. 1 Clemson and No. 2 Oklahoma.
In any other circumstance, having a coaching career rival Richt’s would be more than acceptable. For a long while, Richt was one of the game’s top coaches, and any other school would be content with that trajectory. Unfortunately for Smart, he was tasked with replacing Richt, who was fired for his inability to take Georgia to the next level.
Popular opinion has yet to sway negatively on Smart, but if he isn’t able to win the national title that Georgia so desperately covets in the next couple of years, you could begin to see Richt-like rumblings in Athens.