Georgia a good case for College Football Playoff expansion after SEC title loss to Alabama

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ATLANTA — Marcus Rosemy-Jacksaint was ready to go. Normally accessible and polite, the Georgia senior receiver was keeping his words short and looking for a chance to leave.

“That’s all?” he said when there was a brief lull in questions.

Sorry, one more. Another question about what went wrong in Georgia’s 27-24 loss to Alabama in the SEC Championship Game.

“Like I said, they out-executed us. Outplayed us,” he said.

Then he got up and left. Rosemy-Jacksaint was gone, departing as suddenly as Georgia’s three-peat hope.

We assume, at least. There’s always a chance the College Football Playoff committee agrees with Kirby Smart that Georgia is one of the best four teams in the country and forgives the Bulldogs’ first loss in two years. But the conventional wisdom pointed to the SEC championship’s being an elimination game, barring chaos elsewhere among contenders, and not enough chaos has occurred.

It seems an unfair end to a quest for this program, winner of 29 in a row, and this team, with three Top 25 wins and its only loss by 3 points. But it’s not an injustice in the context of a four-team field. There are only four spots.

Is Georgia good enough to win the national championship? Yes. If it were plugged into the field, would it still be considered one of the favorites? Yes. Instead, because it lost by 3 points Saturday, its first loss in two years, the Bulldogs will likely be going to the Orange Bowl to play Louisville.

Woof.

That’s a great argument for expanding the Playoff. And that’s happening, one year too late for this Georgia team.

In the coming 12-team format, Georgia’s penalty for losing Saturday would have been not having a bye into the quarterfinals. It would have had to win four, rather than three, games to win the national championship. And that’s something this team very well could have done. Most people, if they had to bet money, houses or appendages on who is the best team right now in college football, would still think seriously about Georgia. What we saw Saturday should not change that. It out-gained Alabama and averaged more yards per play. In the four-team Playoff era, we’ve seen a team get blown out in the SEC championship and still win the national title (Georgia two years ago) and another not even make this game and still win it all (Alabama six years ago).

But this Georgia team, in a year with more viable contenders elsewhere, is likely out. And it’s Georgia’s own fault.

This game was there for the taking. But there were too many mistakes:

• An over-reliance on the run game after an artful, effective opening drive in which Carson Beck went 4-for-4 for 57 yards.

• The defense’s failure to get stops late in the fourth quarter.

• A fumble at the worst time, resulting in the 3 points that were the difference. (“We’ve obviously practiced that play a ton,” Beck said of the end around. “It’s simple, we didn’t connect. I’m not really sure exactly what happened.”)

• A missed field goal, after a procedure penalty pushed it back to a career-long 50-yarder for freshman Peyton Woodring.

• The sequence at the end of the first half, when Alabama went from fourth down and holding a 10-7 lead to leading 17-7 after three Jalen Milroe completions. (Yes, one of them, the fourth-down conversion, might have hit the ground.)

But you have to make plays at the most important times, and Georgia did not. The offense failed first. After leading 7-0 with a chance to start racing away, it turtled its way the rest of the first half. The defense failed next, in the second quarter and, after playing so well most of the second half, not getting the necessary stop either time the lead got down to three.

That’s why Georgia lost. The officials missed some calls. But the Bulldogs blew it, in a game they knew they had to win.

“To leave the destiny of our team in someone else’s hands, rather than us handling it ourselves, that’s hard,” Beck said. “But at this point it’s out of our control. We fought hard and felt we showed throughout the season that we were a really dominant team.”

No major college football team has three-peated since the 1930s — Minnesota’s status looks safe again. This is no injustice. It is, however, one of the reasons the Playoff needed to be expanded.

Well, it’s one of the reasons. The most important one was expanding the number of fans nationwide who stay engaged with college football late into the season, involving all regions, rather than a sport simply dominated by teams from the Deep South. Ironically, though, the final year of the CFP will probably have one of those Deep South teams iced out.

Smart, in the lead-up to the game, declined to do any pre-lobbying. As soon as this game ended, he went into it.

“Look, Bill Hancock (the CFP chairman) said it’s not the most deserving. He said, simply, it’s the best four teams. So if you’re going to tell me somebody sitting in that committee room doesn’t think that, that Georgia team is not one of the best four teams, I don’t know if they’re in the right profession,” Smart said. “It’s a really good football team. It’s a really talented football team. It’s a really balanced football team. So they have to make that decision. It’s the best four teams.”

(Side note: Hancock says that. But the committee’s actions usually say it does pick the four most deserving.)

Smart also tried to send a message to the committee that Brock Bowers and Ladd McConkey, two of its best offensive players, were at less than full strength, playing through injuries.

“We didn’t have as much continuity, maybe as we had out there,” he said. “I mean look, guys, it’s tough when Brock Bowers doesn’t practice for 15 days, when Ladd doesn’t practice for 15 days, then they try to go out in the game. The timing is critical.”

Smart did give Alabama’s defense credit. Milroe and Alabama’s offense also got credit for making plays.

What wasn’t given credit: the idea that Alabama in Mercedes-Benz Stadium was some bad luck that Georgia couldn’t overcome.

“I feel like it’s just football,” Georgia senior tailback Kendall Milton said. “This is just top-of-the-line college football, you can’t have them all. It’s been a great little streak. It’s been a while. But you can’t win them all at the end of the day. I know my dawgs, I can feel the hurt in the locker room. I can feel how seriously they’re impacted. Not even just the seniors, the guys under me. And I know how seriously we took it, and I know at the end of the day my team’s going to get back to work.”

Rosemy-Jacksaint, before he scurried away, echoed that sentiment: more work to do, as if the Playoff still wasn’t off the table. He mentioned it when asked to reflect on what this loss meant in the context of the last three years.

“The last two, three years have been great,” Rosemy-Jacksaint said. “We’ve been winning. It’s obviously a blessing to be a part of something like that. It’s a blessing that we’ve worked hard for and we’ve earned. The streak ends, but it’s OK. We’ve got work to do.”

Back to work. Back (most likely) to Miami, where the Playoff run started. But this time for a game that would seem to offer little excitement, will inevitably feature opt-outs, and is just a glorified exhibition.

That’s not good for college football, which is another reason the system is changing. But it’s changing a year late for this Georgia team, still capable of winning it all but unlikely to get the chance.

That’s not wrong. It’s just too bad.

(Top photo of Kirby Smart and Raylen Wilson: Jeffrey Vest / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)