SI:AM | Georgia Left No Doubt

Plus, what TCU is saying after a historic blowout.

Good morning, I’m Dan Gartland. Let me extend a big thank you to Georgia for letting me get to bed early.

In today’s SI:AM:

🐶 Stetson Bennett and Georgia roll

🐸 TCU looks to the future

1️⃣ The Way-Too-Early top 25

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Not even close

Kohjiro Kinno/Sports Illustrated

College football has a new unstoppable force: the Georgia Bulldogs.

“The bigger the stakes, the heavier the pressure, the better [quarterback Stetson Bennett] played. And as coach Kirby Smart declared after this 65–7 trucking of TCU—the biggest rout in the history of either the CFP or BCS—this was his finest performance,” Pat Forde writes in today’s Daily Cover story.

Georgia humiliated TCU in the most lopsided game imaginable. The 58-point blowout was the biggest margin of victory in any bowl game in college football history. It was astonishing to watch. It goes without saying that the Bulldogs were leaps and bounds above their opponent in all aspects of the game. The defense held TCU to a mere 188 yards of total offense while Georgia’s offense racked up 589. Georgia punted once. It averaged more than eight yards per play.

It’s tempting to look at the lopsided score and declare that TCU didn’t deserve to be in the title game, but that’s silly. The Horned Frogs went undefeated in a very strong conference before losing in overtime in the conference title game against an impressive Kansas State team. They outlasted Michigan in a heavyweight fight of a semifinal. TCU had a great team this year. It’s just that hardly anyone in college football can hang with Georgia now.

Winning back-to-back national championships is next to impossible in college football. Georgia is the first team to repeat since Alabama in 2011 and ’12. The constant roster churn makes it daunting to assemble a championship-quality team in consecutive years, let alone not slip up over the course of a long season. It’s even harder in the College Football Playoff era, when teams have to win an extra semifinal game. And Georgia’s repeat is especially impressive when you consider the talent it lost from last year’s team. The Dawgs had eight defensive players selected in the NFL draft, five of them in the first round. Then that same defense went out and held TCU, which averaged more than 40 points per game in the regular season, to a lone touchdown in the national title game.

But Georgia’s most important player was one who won’t be a top NFL draft pick. Quarterback Stetson Bennett, the undersized former walk-on whose story is well known by now, cemented his place in college football history with a six-touchdown game (four passing and two rushing). The game got so out of hand that Georgia coach Kirby Smart was able to pull Bennett from the game in the opening minutes of the fourth quarter so he could receive a standing ovation.

Georgia’s win is a reassertion of SEC dominance over college football. The conference proves year after year that it’s the best in the country, which means that Kirby Smart’s program will have to gear up for a three-peat next fall. For more than a decade, Nick Saban’s Alabama teams have been the sport’s unstoppable force. With a thorough thrashing of an elite team last night, these Bulldogs made the case for being considered one of the best teams in college football history. In 2023, they can keep building upon what is becoming of the strongest dynasties the game has ever seen.

Buy now: Relive Georgia’s back-to-back titles in SI’s commemorative issue

The best of Sports Illustrated

• Forde also has his first top 25 ranking of the 2023 season.
• Ross Dellenger covered the game from TCU’s perspective, writing that the Horned Frogs are ready to do it again next year.
• Richard Johnson broke down how Georgia was able to win so convincingly.
• Chris Mannix argues that the NBA trade deadline is of tantamount importance for the Lakers, who need to make some moves to avoid squandering a great season from LeBron James.
• Rohan Nadkarni believes Kevin Durant’s injury could be beneficial in the long term for the Nets, who will have to weather a tough schedule in the near term without him.
• Conor Orr thinks the open Texans job isn’t nearly as bad as it may seem at first.
• Damar Hamlin was transferred to a hospital in Buffalo.
• Tua Tagovailoa has not been cleared to practice as the Dolphins prepare for the playoffs.
• The NWSL has announced its disciplinary action following the league’s sexual misconduct investigation.

The top six...

… Stetson Bennett touchdowns against TCU:

6. An easy six-yard run thanks to some impeccable blocking.

5. 37 yards to a wide-open Ladd McConkey.

4. Another one to McConkey.

3. A back-shoulder fade to the unstoppable Brock Bowers.

2. Adonai Mitchell’s one-handed catch.

1. His 21-yard untouched run for the first score of the game.

SIQ

On this day in 2003, NBA owners voted to approve an expansion team in Charlotte, bringing the number of teams in the league to 30. When the team came up with a list of finalists for its name five months later, which one did not make the list?

• Bobcats
• Dragons
• Flight
• Knights

Yesterday’s SIQ: TCU has two national football championships in its history, most recently following the 1938 season. Who did the Horned Frogs beat in the Sugar Bowl on Jan. 2, 1939, to finish 11–0?

• Tennessee
• Holy Cross
• Notre Dame
• Carnegie Tech

Answer: Carnegie Tech. (The school is now known as Carnegie Mellon and competes at the Division III level.)

TCU was led by the great Davey O’Brien, who was the team’s leading passer and rusher, but the defense was just as formidable. Only once did the Horned Frogs allow more than one touchdown in a game: in a 21–14 win over Arkansas in their second game.

The Tartans didn’t have a great track record as a program (they’d won just six games in the previous three seasons combined) but came out of nowhere to post their best season in school history in 1938, going 7–1 in the regular season. Three of those wins came against nonmajor opponents (Davis & Elkins, Wittenberg and Akron), but Carnegie also boasted wins over Holy Cross (which finished the year ranked No. 9) and No. 1 Pitt. The Tartans’ only loss came against No. 5 Notre Dame, 7–0.

That résumé was good enough to earn Carnegie the No. 6 spot in the AP poll at the end of the regular season and an invite to the Sugar Bowl. TCU was No. 1. But get this: The poll conducted before the bowl games was the final one of the season, so TCU had already technically locked up the national championship before facing the school from Pittsburgh. A loss to the Tartans would have weakened TCU’s claim as the best team in the nation, but the Horned Frogs won 15–7.

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