As a Georgia Tech alum and fan, I have to give credit where credit is due. Congratulations to Kirby…read moreSmart and the Georgia Bulldogs for winning the 2022 College Football Playoff National Championship. It was a long time coming. Kirby could very well be the next Nick Saban, winning multiple national championships over the next few decades. Kirby is only 46. Georgia (3) is now catching up to Georgia Tech (4) in the number of national championships won. ;)
Georgia's national championships came in 1942, 1980, and 2021. In 1980, the Dawgs went undefeated, 12-0. Former athletic director Vince Dooley was the head coach and freshman running back Herschel Walker was the star player. Walker would go on to win the Heisman Trophy in 1982, his junior and final year in college. Senior halfback Frank Sinkwich is Georgia's only other Heisman winner. Sinkwich won the trophy in 1942, the same season that Georgia won its first national championship (Ohio State and Wisconsin also claimed national titles that year).
I thought Georgia might've been wrong to fire coach Mark Richt in 2015. Turns out I was wrong. Even though Richt whooped our butts - he went 13-2 against Tech - I always liked him. My feelings about him were validated when he joined the ACC Network as an analyst. As part of the job, he even donned Tech gear once: . Objectively, Richt was a great coach. In 15 seasons at Georgia (2001-2015), he went 145-51 (.740) overall, 83-37 (.692) in the incredibly-tough SEC, and 9-5 in bowl games (.643). To date, Kirby has done even better. Since 2016, Kirby has gone 66-15 (.815) overall, 40-9 in the SEC (.816), and 6-2 (.750) in bowl games. Kirby is one of the best-performing coaches in college football today. His record speaks for itself.
Of course, Kirby was able to do something Richt couldn't: win a national championship. How Kirby did so was impressive. He got what was probably the biggest monkey ever off Georgia's back by finally defeating his old mentor Nick Saban and Alabama. The single biggest source of Kirby's career losses has been Bama. So far, Kirby has been a dismal and somewhat-shocking 1-4 (.200) against Saban and the Tide. However, the 2022 national championship may very well be Kirby and Georgia's turning point. Through a combination of outstanding recruiting and coaching, Kirby has Georgia set up to be college football's next most-likely long-term dynasty after Saban and Alabama.
Georgia's in-state rivalry with Georgia Tech hasn't been much of a rivalry, at least since I was a freshman at Tech in 2000. We beat Georgia on the road during my freshman year. At the time, we were ranked 18th in the country, coached by George O'Leary, and wide receiver Kelly Campbell was in my weekly biology lab. From 2001 through 2021, we'd beat Georgia only three more times, all under coach Paul Johnson (2008, 2014, 2016). Georgia's last two losses to Tech were at home in Athens. 2014 was "The Kick and The Pick:" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCYDE_P9AKM and 2016 was Kirby's first year as a head coach. Thank you, CPJ, Harrison Butker, and company. Former coach Chan Gailey and current coach Geoff Collins are 0-fer against the Dawgs.
Georgia leads the all-time series with Tech, 69-41-5 (.600), based on unbiased records. The 1943 and 1944 results are counted differently by each school due to unique circumstances caused by World War II.
In the big picture, a consistently dominant and national-championship-winning Georgia Bulldogs football team is great for the state of Georgia. Like the Atlanta United in 2018 (MLS Cup champions) and the Atlanta Braves in 2021 (World Series champions), UGA has done metro Atlanta and the state of Georgia proud in 2022.