Kirby Smart responds to Georgia ranking outside of CFP bracket

ATHENS, Ga. — Georgia’s positioning outside the latest College Football Playoff bracket has taken the sports world by storm on Wednesday. Despite a nation-best strength of schedule and the No. 3 strength of record, beating third-ranked Texas on the road as well as No. 20 Clemson by 31 in the season-opener, the Bulldogs would be left at home to watch 12 others compete for a National Championship.

Yes, UGA sits with a 7-2 record while others above them have fewer losses, and yes, it’ll have a chance to get back into the mix with a win over No. 7 Tennessee this weekend, but to the fact that a team like Georgia would be on the outside looking in because of road losses to Alabama and Ole Miss – both of whom the committee has in the Playoff – isn’t sitting well with some.

“What the committee said last night was a complete travesty. There’s no getting around it. I know they work hard, sit in a room at a five-star resort ordering caviar and champagne and talk about College Football with 4,000 numbers to look at so I don’t know how they came up with these numbers,” Paul Finebaum said. “… How the committee can disrespect them and put schools like Penn State – are you serious? What has Penn State done this year? Their most impressive win I think was at Southern Cal, a five-loss team, and against Michigan, another five-loss team. Somewhere in there they beat Illinois, which I haven’t seen in a couple of weeks. There’s no justification for it. I know I’m getting excited with three weeks to go, but how can you not be outraged at what we heard?”

Simply put, Finebaum wants there to be more than just losses that get looked at. Who have you beaten to get to this point? Who has beaten you? Those are things that would work in Georgia’s favor given the quality of opponents the Bulldogs have played, especially as compared to the likes of Penn State, Notre Dame, Indiana and others.

Georgia’s projected betting line vs CFP Contenders on a neutral field via @ActionNetworkHQ

(-4) Notre Dame
(-4.5) Penn State
(-6) Miami
(-8.5) Indiana
(-14.5) Boise State pic.twitter.com/tslV91dZ4n

— 704 Dawg (@FSFRecruits) November 13, 2024

Georgia head coach Kirby Smart isn’t going to get upset by it quite like Finebaum or the various anonymous accounts on social media. In fact, he says he didn’t even watch the rankings show last night.

“Yeah, I don’t have a lot of control over it, you know? It’s one of those things. I’m so worried about this game and focused on it, I didn’t get to really see or hear anything from last night. I tried to really tune all that out because the most important thing we can do is improve, play better, and try to play well,” Smart told reporters during the SEC coaches teleconference on Wednesday. “I’m not interested in excuses. I do know that playing on the road in the SEC is one of the hardest things to do. I’ve always said that. Nobody knows this league better than I do. I do know that when you go on the road and play in this league, it’s extremely hard and tough, and we’ve played some really good teams, especially on the road.”

What Smart was more willing to discuss however was the potential future implications of the selection committee’s decisions, specifically as they pertain to the SEC. With the conference still weighing its options to stick with an 8-game conference schedule or add another and move to nine, the head coach now in his ninth year and longtime SEC assistant believes what decisions are made by the committee in the next few weeks should impact the decisions made by Greg Sankey and SEC executives.

“You gotta figure it’s gonna come up. I mean, it’s not the time or place now, but I think, Greg Sankey does a great job with our leadership, but he’ll be thinking long and hard about how the outcome – I mean, it’s a long way from over – but how the outcome comes out of this whole thing,” Smart said. “I don’t know that it’s just about the nine games, it’s about everything because we certainly feel like the strength of our conference is really strong and that there’s gonna be more and more parity. We’ve seen that this year. What does that equal to in terms of the eyes of the committee? Because they’re the judge and the jury in terms of college football, and they make the decisions sometimes based on things that we may not agree with, but they’re the ones that are making the decisions. So there’ll be some decision making you have to make depending on how this thing turns out.”

Of course, as all parties have mentioned, there’s still plenty that can occur between now and when the final bracket is revealed on December 8th, College Football’s version of Selection Sunday. Georgia takes on Tennessee. Ohio State and Indiana play each other, as do Texas and Texas A&M. Notre Dame must get by an undefeated Army while rivalry week can produce as much or more chaos than any given week.

So, things will work themselves out. If the Bulldogs beat the Volunteers, this week’s conversation is a thing of the past come next Tuesday. If they don’t, three losses likely knocks UGA out of contention. And while that might spark conversation going forward about SEC scheduling and creating a system that appropriately rewards teams for playing tough schedules and punishes those that don’t, that’s one for a later date.

Kickoff time for Georgia-Tennessee is set for 7:30 p.m. ET on ABC. Both ESPN’s College GameDay and SEC Network’s kickoff show, SEC Nation, will be in town broadcasting live from Athens that morning. Chris Fowler and Kirk Herbstreit will be on the call that night while Holly Rowe and Laura Rutledge man the sidelines at Sanford Stadium.