Georgia tops preseason AP Poll, will start No. 1 across the board
The second of two major preseason polls is out, but the result is the same. Kirby Smart’s Georgia Bulldogs will be starting their 2024 campaign ranked No. 1 in the nation per the AP Poll ahead of a top-5 that also features Ohio State, Oregon, Texas and Alabama. Ole Miss, Notre Dame, Penn State, Michigan and Florida round out the top-10.
UGA received 46 of the 62 first place votes. Ohio State (15) and Oregon (1) received the rest.
Georgia plays five games against teams ranked in the preseason poll this season with one of the nation’s toughest schedule. Outside of the three games against top-10 competition (Texas, Alabama, Ole Miss), the Bulldogs also take on Clemson and Tennessee who come in at No. 14 and No. 15 respectively. Kentucky and Auburn also appear in the “Others Receiving Votes” category.
Quarterback Carson Beck returns for his second season as UGA’s starter, creating a sense of expectations for the Bulldogs on offense. Beck is surrounded with weapons like Florida transfer Trevor Etienne at running back, last year’s top wide receiver Dominic Lovett, Oscar Delp and Ben Yurosek (Stanford transfer) replacing Brock Bowers at tight end and an offensive line that features four players with starting experience. Meanwhile, as long as Kirby Smart is Georgia’s head coach, the Bulldog defense will always be strong, and that’s the thought once again with the likes of safety Malaki Starks, EDGE Mykel Williams and linebacker Smael Mondon returning.
“I don’t feel like we’re familiar with it because we just don’t pay attention to it,” Smart said when asked of the preseason expectations for his team at the start of fall camp. “You guys are probably more familiar with it than we are in terms of, like, well that’s the expectation. They’re gonna start the season top 5. Or they’re going to be predicted to win the East or West when it was there. Or they’re going to be predicted to win the SEC. I’ve never honestly paid any attention to it, and we don’t talk about it as a team. So the expectation is we’re going to develop and worry about today’s day, and really, we don’t think about that.”
It has been since 2017 that the preseason No. 1 team won the National Championship at season’s end. In fact, 2017 is the only time it’s happened since 2004. Alabama began atop the poll in both 2021 and 2022 when Georgia won its back-to-back College Football Playoff titles before the Bulldogs were on top at the start of last season.
Georgia finished last season fourth in the AP Poll after a dominant win over Florida State in the Orange Bowl. Prior to a loss in the SEC Championship Game against Alabama, the Bulldogs had held on to the top spot for 14 weeks in 2023 along with the final 10 editions in 2022.
Fall camp continues on in Athens, although the team will break from its central base at The Georgia Center with classes starting on Wednesday. Georgia will hold its second scrimmage of the fall on Saturday, two weeks out from kickoff to the 2024 campaign against Clemson on August 31st (12:00 p.m. ET, ABC) in Atlanta. The Bulldogs and Tigers together hold claim to four of the last eight national championships.
