Everyone has an opinion on former Georgia football quarterback Carson Beck announcing that he is transferring to Miami (FL) for one final season of college football. Even the most casual college football found this news extremely surprising and had something to say about Beck, Miami and the Bulldogs.
So if the average college football fan had an opinion on this news, you better believe that every college football media member had to throw their opinion into the mix as well. And to no one's surprise, ESPN's Paul Finebaum offered his opinion on this news as well.
“The fact that Carson Beck didn’t stay at Georgia doesn’t surprise me, but the man’s going to the ACC after being the Heisman favorite in August at Georgia," Finebaum said via essentiallysports.com.
Finebaum interestingly is not surprised at all that Beck is leaving Georgia. Maybe that's because he noticed what many others did throughout Georgia's Sugar Bowl preparations when Beck was nowhere to be found, but Finebaum was not surprised by this decision. It does however sound like he is more shocked that Beck chose Miami.
There are a lot of good reasons for Beck to transfer to the Hurricanes, but Finebaum thinks the ACC in general is an interesting choice. There's no denying that the SEC is a much stronger conference than the ACC, so Finebaum appears to be wondering why Beck wouldn't want to challenge himself in the best conference in college football. And considering Beck was a Heisman favorite last season on a team in the SEC, he is more clearly more than capable of finding success in the SEC.
Would Beck have changed the outcome against Notre Dame?
Finebaum then went on to bring up if the Sugar Bowl against Notre Dame would have gone any different had Beck been healthy and been able to play.
"Would he have made a difference in the Notre Dame game? You have to wonder about that.”
As everyone knows, Beck suffered an injury at the end of the first half of the SEC Championship game that ended up being season ending, but would the result of this game been any different had this injury not occurred?
It's impossible to say, but the Irish likely still would have won the game because of how poorly the rest of Georgia's team played in this game. Beck's presence would not have changed any of that, and Beck wasn't good enough this season to carry the team to victory on his own either.
However, the more interesting debate is if Georgia would have beat the Longhorns in the SEC Championship game if Beck didn't get hurt. The Georgia offense looked horrendous during the first half against Texas, but once the second half started and Gunner Stockton took over, the entire offense played much, much better. So who knows if Georgia even wins this game if Beck didn't get hurt.
Regardless, next season is going to be extremely interesting for all Georgia fans. UGA fans usually don't pay much attention to other teams, especially outside of the SEC, but everyone likely will have a close eye on Beck and Miami to see how things are going in south Florida next year.