But can you beat them... TWICE

Greetings, Dawgfans.

I will not discuss my multi-year absence today for there are greater topics to ponder than precisely what preoccupations have pulled me from penning more prolifically, particularly pertaining to last season’s postseason partytime.  No, I want to focus on something else.

Bama.

Ala Damn Bama.

I’ve been reading a number of articles and blogs over the past few days concerning the upcoming SEC Title Tilt, and most seem to have the same basic conclusion: Yes, Georgia can beat Bama.  I tend to agree with that sentiment, though I’m not exactly sure why.  When we boil it down to the eyeball test, AL is a cut above every competition they face, and any we’ve faced.  I’ve seen it.  I was in the stadium when we lost the National Title Game last season.

I was there, sitting with my mother, on her 70th birthday.  It was my first National Title Game, my first time watching the Dawgs play for it all.. and I had flown from California to Georgia for the express purpose of taking my mother to that game for her birthday.  A friend, a BAMA fan no less, had secured tickets for me.  I got a good deal on plane tickets.  I found a hotel with decent rates, and parking directly across the street from the stadium on a horribly rainy day.  It was as if everything was all coming together perfectly - and then everything came apart.  We had no answer for Tua.  Our offense couldn’t get out of the mud.  Saban’s second half was a clinic on how it’s damn done.

I remember the elation after that sack... and I remember the deflation at the touchdown.  And I remember thinking, in that moment.. “Damn.  We were just THAT close to everything... but we just couldn’t beat BAMA.”

Many fan bases and many teams have felt the sting of that same realization, and I know it has been sitting with this fan base and this team for nearly a year.  And I know that often times Revenge Games work out very well for the team that has the chip on its shoulder... and I have read the reasoning behind thinking UGA has a shot to pull off the upset this weekend.

We’re Peaking at the right time.
Our Yards Per Play is high.
Our Offensive success rate is high.
Our Passing Efficiency is high.
Our Defense has improved immensely.

Etc etc etc.

And all of that may be true - but I feel as though I would be remiss if I didn’t mention this one simple fact.  It’s not the SEC Championship that this fan base and this team feels starved for.  It is the National Championship - the marker that has eluded UGA since that 1980 season.  13-1 wasn’t good enough in 2002.  10-2 wasn’t good enough for a #2 spot and a BCS berth in 2007.  Bama knocked us out in 2012 and 2017.

Good ol’ Bama.  Ever since Matt Stafford put them away in one play of OT (2007), we haven’t been able to get over that hump.  0-4 since, twice in season, twice in post-season.

Now, in order to get that elusive National Championship, UGA will have to beat BAMA... and most likely, we’ll have to do it twice.  We’ll need to twice beat a tea that has lost 2 games since late September of 2015.

Maybe Kirby and Company can put it all together on December 1st.  Perhaps the statistical trends continue (though no one we have played since LSU has an even close to comparable defense) and we pull off that victory.  Let’s assume for a moment that we can actually get that done.  There’s no telling what the Playoff Committee will come up with after the championship games are all played, but I suspect it will be UGA at 3 and AL at 4... setting up a potential rematch in the Natty.

That would be UGAvAL III and this time, THEY would be the team looking for revenge.  THEY would be the team with the chip on their shoulder.  THEY would be the team seeking redemption in the form of hardware, and we would be the team again defending the SEC and again looking to unseat the All-Time Title Holders as this year’s Champion.

Given all that, do you think we could beat Bama.... twice?

Well hell, why not?  We beat both Florida AND Kentucky twice this year.  Might as well make it a hat-trick.


GO DAWGS.