Georgia has been on quite the run the last few years. After going 12-0 and losing in the 2023 SEC Championship game they have rattled off two straight SEC Championships.
While that is absolutely worth celebrating, at a program like Georgia it isn’t good enough. That’s at least what Kirby Smart thinks as the Bulldogs lack of recent playoff success is starting to really frustrate him.
"I will never apologize for winning an SEC title,” Smart said via x.com. “I think it’s the hardest thing to do in sports, to win the SEC title in almost any sport. Our conference is so hard, and when we went to 16 teams, it made it harder. But we’ve missed the mark in the playoff two years in a row, and I give a lot of credit to those two teams (Ole Miss and Notre Dame)."
Kirby Smart isn’t satisfied with winning the SEC
Three years ago Georgia was left out of the playoff after losing their one and only game of the season in the SEC Championship game. Fast forward to the previous two seasons and they didn’t let that happen again because they went out and won the SEC two years in a row. Unfortunately that didn’t lead to any success in the playoff as they lost their first game each year.
Those two SEC titles are a great accomplishment, but failing in the CFP hurts. Winning a national title is the ultimate goal, so even though the last two years were good seasons they could’ve been much better.
Smart is clearly getting frustrated with the lack of playoff success the last few years. Georgia has been the most dominant program in the country this decade, but if they continue losing in the playoff then that title might be given to someone else.
But all it takes is one magical run this year and Georgia will once again be the consensus No. 1 program in the country.