Will Kirby Smart’s Georgia still be in the CFB if they lose the SEC championship? Insiders weigh in on the possibilities
The crew at Big Noon Kickoff firmly believes that Kirby Smart's Georgia Bulldogs already have a seat at the CFP later this year. With the regular season coming to a close this year, all the talk has already shifted to the upcoming first 12-team college football playoff which will bring added excitement to the bowl season.
According to Joel Klatt and co., Georgia's resume is extremely strong considering their only two losses are against top 20 teams (No. 13 Alabama and No. 15 Ole Miss). They even speculated that if the Georgia Bulldogs were to lose the SEC championship game, they would still make it to the CFP considering the crowd around them. They highlighted the importance of their victory over Texas, then the No. 1 school in the nation, to put them in such a comfortable position.
Kirby Smart's Georgia CFP hopes improve despite eight OT win over Georgia Tech
Georgia had some difficulty dispatching its in-state rival, the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets, with the game ending 44-42 in eight overtime. Despite the difficulty, in the end, coach Kirby Smart was pleased with his team's victory:
“The overtime was epic… It was weird. It seemed like every time somebody failed, they had to go again. I don’t know why. It seemed like we failed, we got to go again. So you had to get over that. Then they would fail, and they had to go again. It was the back-to-back.”
“It was almost like it was a battle of adversity, the hardest thing to do is right after you fail on defense or offense, you’ve got to go right back out there and change ends. I just don’t remember a game like that out there.”
Interestingly, their odds of making the CFP improved despite the manner of the victory. Before the encounter, they had a 94.8% chance of making the game according to ESPN. Now, that's up to 98.7%. What didn't improve was their possibility of winning the national title. At the moment it's at 11.3%, from 11.6% before the game. The drop in their odds of making the national title game was a bit steeper, from 22.6% to 21.9%