College Football

And as recruits flock to the Bulldogs, they can thank quarterback Stetson Bennett IV, whose first stint with the team came as a walk-on.

Bullard, a sophomore, had two interceptions and a fumble recovery and the Bulldogs held the star receiver Quentin Johnston to a single catch for 3 yards. And yet they were tested only twice: rallying from 10 points down in the fourth quarter to win at Missouri and coming back from a 13-point fourth-quarter deficit in the semifinal victory against Ohio State, which they survived on the missed field goal. Georgia held the Horned Frogs, who entered averaging 474.1 yards per game, to a season-low 188. A year later, Justin Fields, the top quarterback prospect in the country, showed up and those fealties to the school he grew up rooting for didn’t mean much. And each spring, many of those former prospects — after years spent in a football finishing school — trickle out to the N.F.L. Bennett was also dangerous running the ball. The offensive coordinator Todd Monken, who arrived just as the coronavirus pandemic hit, was trying to parse through a crowded quarterbacks room, attempting to find reps for Jamie Newman, a transfer from Wake Forest, J.T. Daniels won the job in 2020 and got hurt in last year’s season opener against Clemson. Each recruiting cycle, the top high school football prospects in the country, from California to Pennsylvania and all across the south, funnel into Athens, Ga. And with the way the Bulldogs continued to parade into the end zone and tee off on Max Duggan, the T.C.U. Their back-to-back titles are the first since Alabama a decade ago. The coin flip?

Two titles in two years -- including Monday's blowout of TCU in the College Football Playoff National Championship game -- and a bundle of returning talent ...

And in the case of what Kirby has done at Georgia, that is especially true. "You have to expect to be in these games and expect to win these games, but you can't assume that it will happen. The GOAT was fully focused on what was in front of him. The legendary Miami Hurricanes calling out from NFL locker rooms to those youngsters now in their beloved orange and green to ask what happened after a loss to a rival or one that ended a streak. "Now I am done, but I think that those who are still here, and maybe those of us who are gone, have a responsibility to make sure this keeps rolling. A team that looked emotionally and physically exhausted after a New Year's Eve thriller comeback win over Ohio State in the CFP semifinals responded by embarking on a week of practice that Bennett described in the days leading up to the title game as "a damn reconstruction project." I know how hard it is to get to the peak of the sport, and I know it is even harder to stay there. The Bulldogs' 29 wins ties the mark for any major college team over a two-season span and is the most ever for an SEC school. "But I know what a great program looks like, a program that is built to last. It's about what it might be able to do that few have ever done before: move past building championship seasons and move into building a championship era. Now, the conversation about Georgia football isn't about what it hasn't been able to do. [Alabama](/college-football/team/_/id/333/alabama-crimson-tide).

Xavier Truss of the Georgia Bulldogs celebrates with teammates after his team's first touchdown against the TCU Horned Frogs in the College Football Playoff ...

Before the season began, TCU was picked to finish seventh in the conference and was a 200-to-1 longshot to win the national championship. The bulldog is a common fixture at Georgia games wearing a UGA uniform and hanging out in an air-conditioned doghouse on the sidelines. Led by Bennett (a former walk-on QB), Georgia overwhelmed the Southeastern Conference — the best conference in college football. It came in to the title game with a 13-1 record and the Big 12 Conference champions. Georgia simply dominated to lead 38-7 at the break, scoring on all six of its possessions (the first team to do that in the playoffs). One notable Bulldog didn't get to witness the victory. Before Georgia, no team had repeated as national champion in the CFP era. TCU started the second half on a positive note — forcing a Georgia punt. Georgia responded right away with a 37-yard Bennett touchdown pass to extend the lead to 17-7. Like the Georgia QB, Duggan, the With an unrelenting and dominant performance in the national championship game, Georgia swamped Texas Christian University 65-7 to finish undefeated and repeat as national champions. It would be TCU's only points of the game.

There is no banal color commentary, no players milling around between plays — just athletes carrying a billion-dollar industry on their backs with amazing ...

Unofficial hype videos give us a view into the culture that we can’t see on TV. The hype-video auteur’s vision of college football is probably much closer to the players’ vision than the N.C.A.A.’s. This version of the sport is a lucrative business scheme hiding behind a facade of dignified amateurism that no longer exists. These songs accompany shots of players piercing offensive lines to make vicious sacks, grown men hurling other grown men onto the turf and sublime 60-yard touchdown passes. I went to college at the University of Texas at Austin, a place where football reigns supreme. More than anything, these videos are propaganda controlled by administrators and communication strategists, meant to burnish teams’ brands of administrators and communication strategists. Almost half of Division I college-football players are Black; the sport is normally a Black experience refracted through mostly white commentators, fans, boosters, coaches and TV executives. Rather than the staid orchestral scores or generic hip-hop beats that sound as if they were made by an A.I., these clips are set to trap music, a raw hip-hop subgenre from the South named for the drug-dealing milieus it originated in. All the while, the university sold the games as part of a storied tradition but ignored shameful details, like the fact that Texas had one of the last major college-football programs to integrate, or that its most celebrated coach, Darrell K. Enter hype videos: do-it-yourself compilations of divinely timed stiff arms, the most beautiful jukes you’ve ever seen, otherworldly one-handed backward-diving catches and other athletic feats. I was swept up, along with everyone else, in the annual cycle of anticipation, fanaticism, disappointment and acceptance. I could never wholly embrace the game, though.

Georgia is once again the national champion of college football after a historic 65-7 destruction of TCU in the national championship game to close out 2022 ...

[Bookmark](https://si.com/fannation/college/cfb-hq) [Top 25 Rankings](https://www.si.com/college-football/rankings) [Rankings](https://www.si.com/fannation/college/cfb-hq/ncaa-football-rankings) 1 team in the very first AP top 25 college football rankings to begin the 1936 season. 9 North Carolina in the Sugar Bowl. [Schedule](https://www.si.com/college-football/schedule)

Certainly the Bulldogs are at the top of the list. We got a sneak peek at the talent on their roster for the 2023 campaign in the second half against TCU, and ...

The Pac-12 is going to be fascinating to watch next season, with the quarterbacks that are going to be under center in the conference. That success put Nix in the Heisman conversation for a while, until the Ducks lost to the Huskies in a thrilling game late in the season. Nix will get another receiver to throw to via the transfer portal, and a familiar one at that. He hit on 20 of 24 passes for 279 yards and a touchdown in Clemson’s win over North Carolina in the ACC Championship Game, and will have some talent around him next year. On the defensive side of the football, the Huskies look stout up front, with Bralen Trice and Zion Tupuola-Fetui back in the fold. That unit will have to step up, or Riley will have to make some coaching changes for USC to truly get to the playoff and win a title. The reason Tennessee is on here is because of the QB. Getting the defense ironed out is a big question, but when you have offense, you can do anything in college football. With Lincoln Riley pulling the strings on the offense as well as an incoming flux of transfers and the 15th ranked recruiting class (and a top 5 transfer class), the USC offense should be once again, very good. For the second-straight season, the Wolverines fell short in the College Football Playoff, but Michigan is primed to make another deep run next season. The Bulldogs are riding high after a 65-7 romp over TCU, but the scariest part of the team that hung 65 in the national title game is that they were relatively young this year. Certainly the Bulldogs are at the top of the list.