College Football championship

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).