A statement win and then an open question defined Saturday for No. 12 Georgia.
The Bulldogs put together what head coach Kirby Smart considered the most complete team effort of the season with a 31-17 win over No. 7 Tennessee, then pointed their curiosity to the big picture question left for the College Football Playoff committee to answer on Tuesday.
“I don’t know what they’re looking for. I really don’t,” Smart said of the selection committee. “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. You can’t see that stuff on TV, and so I don’t know what they look for. But that’s for somebody else to decide. I’m worried about our team.”
Smart held Tennessee under 20 points and kept the Vols off the scoreboard in the second half to put themselves in position to rejoin the projected 12-team playoff bracket when the third iteration of the CFP rankings launch on Tuesday. At No. 12 entering the game, Georgia would have slotted behind Boise State by virtue of the Broncos being a conference champion.
Georgia was No. 3 before a loss to Ole Miss, and committee chair Warde Manuel explained inconsistent offensive play was part of the reason the Bulldogs were dropped nine spots.
“It was a week ago, for a couple of hours, that we were dead and gone. People had written us off,” Smart said in praising his “resilient” team Saturday night.
Smart needed only a few deep breaths postgame before he challenged the committee to put their feet on the ground in the gameday environment SEC teams endure, such as Ole Miss or Sanford Stadium, the Bulldogs’ homefield where Georgia now has 29 wins in a row.
“They’re not in that environment,” Smart said. “They’re not at Ole Miss in that environment, playing against that defense, which is top five in the country with one of the best pass rushers in the country, and they’re fired up. They got a two-score lead, and they’re coming every play. They don’t know. They don’t understand that.”
