Tennessee came to Athens for the second straight time higher in the College Football playoff rankings, and left with a loss once again.
“We’re not playing the College Football Playoff committee,” Georgia coach Kirby Smart said Saturday morning on ESPN’s College GameDay. “That’s not who we’re playing against. We’re playing against Tennessee. We’ve got to focus on the task at hand. The rest of it will take care of itself.”
Georgia should pass Tennessee in the CFP rankings Tuesday night, with the Bulldogs going from last team out and ranked No. 12 but behind an automatic conference champion to in the field inside the 12-team bracket.
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The Bulldogs are considered in the playoff by most if they finish 10-2. Georgia plays UMass Saturday and then Georgia Tech on Nov. 29.
Georgia dropped nine spots after a 28-10 drubbing at Ole Miss in part because committee chair Warde Manuel said “their offense hasn’t been consistent.”
If the 13-person selection committee was watching this one, they saw a Bulldog offense put up more points and yards—453—than anyone has against Tennessee all season.
The previous high points was by Arkansas in a 19-14 Razorbacks win.
“I don’t know what they’re looking for,” Smart said in his postgame press conference, echoing what he said on the field in an ABC interview. “I really don’t. I wish they could really define the criteria. I wish they could do the eyeball test where they come down here and look at the people we’re playing against and look at them. And you can’t see that stuff on TV. So I don’t know what they look for, but that’s for somebody else to decide.”
He added: “They’ll probably look at this week and say, well, we just played against one of the best defenses in the country. And we went for 453 on them, and it could have been more. So it’s just the tale of each week. And we’re trying to be the cumulative, whole, really good quality team. And not be on this emotional roller coaster that’s controlled by people in a room somewhere that may not understand football like we do as coaches. We as coaches look at people and say, what can we do better? How do we get better? I respect their decision. I respect their opinion but it’s different in our league.”
For the record, the committee does include coaches including a former SEC coach in Gary Pinkel who coached in the league from 2012-15 at Missouri. It also includes former Nevada coach Chris Ault, former Wake Forest coach Jim Grobe and former Oregon State and Nebraska coach Mike Riley.
ADs on the committee include Arkansas’ Hunter Yurachek and Virginia’s Carla Williams who was a senior athletic administrator at Georgia until 2017.
Georgia’s wins at CFP No. 3 Texas, No. 7 Tennessee and No. 20 Clemson are going to be hard to match by other contenders.
The SEC has 9-1 Texas and five teams at 8-2: Georgia, Alabama, Ole Miss, Texas A&M and Tennessee. Two of those teams could be left out.
Asked where he thinks his team is in the playoff picture, Tennessee coach Josh Heupel said: “I have no idea, man. All I know is this league is college football as good as it gets. It is. Teams get beat on the road sometimes.”
Georgia’s Carson Beck, whose 12 interceptions were as hard apparently for the committee to watch as it was for Georgia fans, threw none Saturday but did light up the Vols for 347 yards and 2 touchdowns on 25 of 40 passing.
Beck spoke to the players Monday after a team meeting. Beck said some players had reached out to Smart who said they wanted to make other guys aware of how significant the Tennessee game was.
Beck spoke as did Jalon Walker, Tate Ratledge and Malaki Starks.
He said his message was “as long as we want this thing to keep going, we got to win. Backs against the wall, it is what it is. Let’s go roll and let’s go have fun.”
Said Walker: “Nobody likes to lose. It’s what we don’t do here at Georgia. We love to win football games and we had an opportunity to do that tonight.”
Smart, whose team won back-to-back national titles in 2021 and 2022 and went 13-1 last season, said when asked about navigating the SEC and going 6-2 in the league, that everyone thinks Georgia should win every game.
“How you handle losses says a lot about you,” he said. “And these kids are going grow up to be contributors to society and how they respond to tough situations, man. They’re so much more prepared for bad things to happen in their life because of what they do in this organization and what they go through and the criticism they take. They’ll never be as criticized as they are by the outside world in this sport. And I’m proud of the way they stuck together and kind of bonded and came out and played well.’
(This story was updated to add a video.)
