Georgia is making its case for entry into the college football playoffs after a committee snub

The beauty of one 12-team College Football Playoff is that it creates more opportunities for more teams and more excitement for more fans. It's three times as much fun as the days with four teams.

The less pleasant side effect of a twelve-team play-off is that the arguing and complaining increases at the same rate. And we're doing the controversial stretch run. So late Saturday night, it was up to Georgia Bulldogs coach Kirby Smart, after his team's biggest win in two years, to tell the playoff selection committee what's missing when assessing his team.

I don't know what they're looking for, I really don't, Smart said after Georgia defeated the Tennessee Volunteers by 3,117 in a make-or-break game for the Dawgs from a playoff perspective. I wish they could really define the criteria. I wish they could do the eyeball test where you come out here and look at the people they were playing against. You don't see things like that on TV. They are not in that environment. They're not at Ole Miss playing that defense.

Of course the committee cannot be in Oxford on a particular Saturday, ma'am. Not even in Eugene, Oregon, in October, when the Ohio State Buckeyes played the Oregon Ducks. Or in Dallas, when the BYU Cougars defeated the SMU Mustangs in September. Damn luck, the committee can't just pick a location and show up on the sidelines to administer the old eyeball test.

Smart continued: We're trying to be a really good quality team that isn't on this emotional roller coaster that's driven by people in a room somewhere who maybe don't understand football like we do as coaches. In our competition it is different.

In our competition it is different will be the rallying cry for the cluster of Southeastern Conference teams vying to reach the playoffs. There are now six in contention, up from eight heading into Saturday. Three or four will likely make it to the final round, with the powerful drum beats destined to get louder as we get closer to Selection Sunday.

Committee Chairman Warde Manuel entered the usual self-destructive territory last Tuesday when discussing the Bulldogs and stating that their offense was inconsistent. Manuel and former CFP presidents are given the thankless task of creating the meaningless weekly rankings and then discussing them. They can only talk themselves into trouble, never out of trouble, and they routinely make the mistake of trying to talk like football experts when the job is to review CVs.

With two rsum losses, most recently an 18-point loss to Mississippi, Georgia was in trouble heading into this game.

A week after being pushed down to No. 12 in the CFP rankings and outside the regular season, Boise State, at No. 13, would be guaranteed a spot as the Group of 5's top-ranked conference champions, the Bulldogs faced a matchup that had to be won. They had been criticized by their own fans and the media this past week after punking at Ole Miss. None more so than quarterback Carson Beck, who seemed to succumb during the course of the season.

At 72, the Dawgs had their worst nine-game record since 2020. One more loss and they would have been all but eliminated from the playoffs, which would have been a huge fall for the preseason No. 1 team and the national champions of 21 and 22. .

Today the dynasty is on its deathbed. Georgia would not go down easily. Not at home, not against an opponent who has owned it, not with his vast reservoir of talent and pride.

It will go down in the record books as an eighth consecutive victory over the Vols by two touchdowns or more. But here among the hedges, Georgia found herself between a rock and a hard place early on.

The negative atmosphere from Oxford spread to Athens in the first quarter. Georgia produced just one first down in its first three possessions. Tennessee sprinted to a lead of 100, and it could have been 140 had Australian punter Brett Thorson not made a touchdown-saving tackle.

Beck continued his struggling play, completing only two of his first nine passes. Everything went completely miserable until the final play of the first quarter, when Beck fired a third-and-8 pass over the middle to Dominic Lovett for a 38-yard gain.

Just like that, the cloud lifted over the Dawgs. Confidence can be an astonishingly fickle thing in athletics, and it was as if all Beck needed was one good play to snap him out of a four-match funk in which he scored 10 goals.

Two plays after that release throw, Beck scrambled for 14 yards. He then pulled off a 19-yard touchdown pass to tight end Oscar Delp. The Georgia offense was back on track, on its way to scoring on four straight possessions and taking a 2,417 lead into the third quarter. The Dawgs added another score in the fourth, inflicting further pain on a Tennessee program that has a chronic silver-and-black problem.

Beck finished with 347 yards passing and 379 in total offense, with a passing efficiency rating of 151.87, his highest in more than a month. In a must-win game, he played until the moment.

Just have fun, let it go, Beck told his teammates this week. We have nothing to lose at this point.

Maybe the urgency of the moment was liberating, at least after that first big play. Center Jared Wilson said Beck was a different man than he has been lately.

To be honest, I hadn't seen that Carson Beck in a few weeks, Wilson said.

Beck made throws. His tight ends, Delp, Ben Yurosek and Lawson Luckie, made catches (a combined 10 for 130 yards). Offensive coordinator Mike Bobo, a frequent target of fan outrage, made the call, according to Smart. A chronically puny running game went 106 yards. A broken offensive line yielded no sacks.

It was a get-well game at just the right time, and it should easily put Georgia back into the playoffs this week. The only two-loss team that should be ahead of the Bulldogs is Ole Miss. Look at how many one-loss teams are ahead of the Bulldogs as well.

Everyone thinks we should win every game, Smart said. I am very proud of this team. We played the toughest schedule in our league.

That's certainly true, at least among the remaining contenders. Road games at Alabama, Texas and Ole Miss are quite a challenge. This was Georgia's first home game since Oct. 12, a point Smart made more than once over the past week.

It was a make-or-break moment against a good opponent, and Georgia did what it had to do. Tennessee (82) is now the team sent to the playoff bubble. The lobbying, arguing and complaining will continue, but if the Bulldogs keep winning, all arguments will end.