SEC, Georgia at the top of rapidly changing college football landscape – Daily News

INGLEWOOD — Georgia was flown to LAX and its domestic title defense last week by a Delta plane with the signature of Vince Dooley, the founder of the Bulldogs’ first dynasty, engraved on the fuselage.

The recent Bulldogs final preparations also included a video of Dooley, who passed away on October 28th.

“Sometimes it’s easier to just get there and then be there and try to hold it and defend it,” Dooley said in the video.

Bulldog was ready.

Georgia sat back, thrashed Cinderella TCU 65-7 on Monday night and continued to dominate the ever-changing college football landscape, ending perhaps the most tumultuous season in the history of the sport with 60 minutes of certainty. I was.

By retaining the national title among the hedges to become the first school to successfully defend the crown since Nick Saban’s Alabama defended it in 2012, Georgia beat 72,628 servings at SoFi Stadium. ‘s college football playoff championship game victory. In his most transformative decade, one thing hasn’t changed. It’s a season that ends with the SEC School lifting the national title game’s gold trophy into a downpour of confetti.

“When credential creeps into your program, you get in trouble. We don’t have anything like that here,” Smart said. “Our kids don’t run away from work. Unless they qualify for the program, they have a chance.

“You only have one chance to be a legend. We didn’t want to leave anything behind.”

Completing a perfect 15-0 season and securing 17 straight wins, Georgia secured their fifth consecutive SEC title and the most lopsided victory in the history of the game.

The SEC’s 12th title in the last 16 years never really mattered.

By the time halftime hit St. Simons and Jekyll Island, Statesboro and Lawrenceville, Dacula and Valdosta, Bainbridge and Moultrie, Dawg fans already had a lot of congratulations.

Stetson Bennett’s accurate passing and timely running, Bulldogs head coach Kirby Smart’s dominant defense, a trademark of seven seasons at his alma mater in Georgia, led 38-7 after 30 minutes.

Bennett threw two touchdowns, ran two more, and the Bulldogs forced three horned turnovers in the first half, leaving TCU completely underwhelmed.

“We had the worst first half,” said TCU head coach Sonny Dykes. “We flipped the ball three times and gave up on big plays. I think I was rounding the

Even in the second half, the visibility from the sidelines of TCU did not improve at all. Bennett, his 25-year-old ex-walk-on, nicknamed “The Postman” for always making deliveries, made 18 of his 25 passes that night for 305 yards and his 4 of his TDs. He accounted for his 36 Georgia points and equaled his game record for a national title. The Bulldogs rolled up offense for 485 yards and 589 total yards in his first three quarters.

“What he did tonight was absolutely amazing,” Smart said. “What he did tonight was probably his best game.

“He has GOAT status in Athens, Georgia. That’s for sure.”

“He’s a legend in college football,” Dykes said. “When you think of Stetson Bennett, you think of him winning back-to-back national titles.”

The SEC’s continued control of America’s second most popular sport, laying the cornerstones of the Georgian dynasty, betrayed uncertainty and unprecedented change that rocked a $4 billion industry .

In a decades-long arms race, scrambles to secure nine- and ten-figure media rights contracts have dramatically changed the landscape of the game, leading to former New Year’s Day icons like the Rose Bowl and Orange Bowl. to the undercard of college football. An expanding playoff to 12 teams in 2024 threatened to tear the 118-year-old Pac 12 apart and shrink the sport’s Power 5 conference to Power 2.

All of this has convinced many sports insiders that college football is more popular and unruly than ever.

“I feel like college football right now. Who are the leaders?” Kirk Herbstreit, former Ohio State quarterback and longtime ESPN analyst, said. increase. “Who is ultimately making the decision to try to have that conversation? It’s definitely not the NCAA. I can’t wait.There are so many unknowns in college football right now.”

USC and UCLA are limping across the finish line in the 2022 season as they head into the 14-member Big Ten in 2024. The conference has provided half of his CFB Playoff Final 4 this season, chasing his $7 billion fortune in the conference. A seven-year media rights deal, a Saturday deal with longtime rivals at The Farm and Lake Washington, for road trips to the Big House in Ann Arbor and college football wastelands like New Brunswick, New Jersey and College Park, Maryland. will be traded with.

Texas, which already has its own television network, and ancient enemy Oklahoma are bringing their Red River rivalry to the SEC.

The expansion of the college football playoffs will pour an additional $1.9 billion into the sport.

Schools aren’t the only ones chasing money.

There were 1,746 Division I football players on the NCAA transfer portal when Georgia and TCU kicked off on Monday. Bennett won the Bulldogs’ starting quarterback job a month ahead of him in the 2021 season after former Matter Day star JT Daniels, who moved from USC, suffered an oblique injury. Daniels spent the season in West Virginia. Next fall he will be photographing at his fourth college, Rice.

“Look, we’re getting ready for the national championship game this week, and we’ve had six transfers on campus on official visits,” Dykes said. are you really doing this?

The massive migration of tailbacks and free safeguards is as much about trading names, images, and similarities as playing time. The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled in June 2021 that the NCAA cannot legally restrict education-related payments to students. TCU said he was on the verge of emerging as a top 10 contender in 1985, but at the time he was head of Frog. I learned I had received it and reported it to the NCAA. Despite Wacker’s outspokenness, TCU received his NCAA penalty that took decades to overcome. Among the accusations that a TCU player was doing a $700 busboy job at a pizza parlor owned by the Horned Frog alum.