Georgia Becomes First Team to Repeat in Playoff Era

Georgia made history in multiple ways on Monday night, but none topped the Bulldogs becoming the first back-to-back champion in the history of the College Football Playoff.

Christian Goeckel | Jan 10, 2023

There have been only four teams since the implementation of the AP Poll in 1936 to repeat as College Football's undisputed national champions: Notre Dame 1946-47, Oklahoma 1955-56, Nebraska 1994-95, and Alabama 2011-12.

Georgia made it 5 on Monday night.

The Bulldogs obliterated the TCU Horned Frogs 65-7 in front of millions of viewers. As the clock struck triple-zeros, there was no question who the best team, and program, in the country is.

What makes this repeat unique is the postseason format. Georgia is the first team in the College Football Playoff Era to repeat as champions. With their win, Kirby Smart's Bulldogs became the first team in FBS history to win 29 games over just two seasons.

The 𝐅𝐈𝐑𝐒𝐓 𝐄𝐕𝐄𝐑 back-to-back #CFBPlayoff National Champion: the Georgia Bulldogs.#NationalChampionship | #GoDawgs @GeorgiaFootball pic.twitter.com/xiu8BaQfTc
— College Football Playoff (@CFBPlayoff) January 10, 2023

Now, there are a couple different ways to look at the accomplishment:

On one hand, you can point to the added difficulty of what Georgia's had to go through to win their two championships. Neither Notre Dame nor Oklahoma had to play a conference championship game to qualify for their national title game. None of the repeat champs had to play in a College Football Playoff Semifinals game. It could be said that the added games against elite teams made Georgia's title runs that much harder.

On the other hand, without the benefit of the Playoff format, Georgia doesn't qualify for the championship in 2021 following their SEC Championship Game loss to Alabama.

In the pre-CFP days, there were plenty of champions who finished inside of the top-4 the following year, just missing out on qualifying for the championship game. Do they repeat if a four-team format is in play? Maybe, but we'll never know. What we do know is Georgia is the current standard in college football, and it doesn't look like they're going anywhere.

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