Georgia ended its 2023 season with a loss to Alabama in the SEC championship game at Mercedes-Benz Stadium -- the same venue it left Saturday afternoon with a resounding 34-3 win against No. 14 Clemson to open its 2024 season.
If all goes according to their plan, the Bulldogs will return to Atlanta again. And again. And maybe even again.
Georgia could play at Mercedes-Benz Stadium for the SEC title, again in the Peach Bowl for a College Football Playoff quarterfinal, and a fourth time in the national championship game.
"Anytime you play in Atlanta in this facility and it's part of a title sponsor game where you're playing another top-15, top-20 matchup, to me it feels like a playoff game," Georgia coach Kirby Smart said. "It's a great way to try to assess where you are as a team.
"No longer do you have to win every game, but you do have to find out when you're going to be playing your best, and you want to be playing your best towards the end of the year," he said, "and one of the best barometers is to get quality wins."
Saturday's statement against the Tigers was the kind of "quality win" that gets the attention of the College Football Playoff selection committee. The 12-team playoff field is new, but how the committee ranks its top 25 teams each week will remain the same. The first of six rankings won't be revealed until Nov. 5 (also Election Day), but teams began to build their case in Week 1.
Keep in mind, the following is a prediction of how the committee would rank the teams after Week 1, not how they would seed them. The 12-team playoff seeding will look different from the ranking. The top four highest ranked conference champions receive byes and the top five conference champions receive entry into the field.
Here's the first prediction of the season for how the committee would rank -- not seed -- the top 12 teams.
