Georgia football: team certainly disinterested in playing the Sugar Bowl

Georgia football lost to Texas in the Sugar Bowl Tuesday night 28-21. The Dawgs fall to 11-3 to end the 2018 season. Kirby Smart’s record falls to 32-10.

Georgia football lost to Texas Tuesday night. That’s how the game should be seen. Texas didn’t beat Georgia, they were given the win by a team and coaching staff who wanted to be somewhere else. They wanted to play in Dallas or Miami a few days earlier, seeing how those games were squash matches, Georgia’s team likely wanted those games even more.

They had nothing left to prove after the Orange Bowl and Cotton Bowl. And if you think they still do, you didn’t watch much Georgia football this year. You would have to think last night’s performance was typical of the 2018 Georgia football team to believe the Dawgs still have something to prove after the Sugar Bowl. Which anyone who watched this team all year would know last night was atypical.

As far as the team was concerned, the season ended on December 2 when the playoff selection committee chose to keep Georgia out of the playoffs. Regardless of if they won or loss in the Sugar Bowl, the Georgia team would have gone into the off-season with the same disappointment. As I drove home after watching the game, I thought about that. I didn’t think I would have felt any differently about the 2018 season if Georgia had beaten Texas. Now that I’ve had time to sleep on it, my opinion hasn’t changed.

The team, coaches and this fan base entered the month of December with one thing on our minds, winning championships. The loss to Alabama and the committee’s subsequent decision to rank us no. 5 prohibited us from winning any.

When you watch the Sugar Bowl, knowing how well the team played for most of the season, you know they felt the season had already ended. Just look at some of the players Georgia gave meaningful snaps to last night on defense. Azeez Ojulari and Divaad Wilson, two freshmen who may become stars in the future, but they weren’t on the field at the Sugar Bowl for anything more than to get valuable reps before the season ended.

Sorry Texas, sorry college football fans, and sorry Georgia fans who really wanted to see the Dawgs win. But the Sugar Bowl was little more than the pre-spring game to us. We didn’t get the team’s best, because in the end, what does it matter? A championship wasn’t on the line in New Orléans, the legacy of the 2018 team had already been decided in Atlanta.

Georgia hired Kirby Smart to bring some of what made Alabama great to Athens. Not showing up for non-championship bowl games when the team feels like they should have won the title, is part of that. If the pain of last night’s loss is soon supplemented by the joy of winning National Championships, all’s well that ends well I suppose.

But if a National Championship isn’t on the horizon, the Sugar Bowl debacle will be a black eye Kirby Smart’s program will carry for a while. Alabama backed up their “only championships matter mentality” multiple times. We absolutely must do the same.