Though they’re getting harder and harder to find, there are members of the Georgia Bulldogs who remember what it’s like to lose a football game.
Georgia has won 29 consecutive contests since falling to Alabama 41-24 at the 2021 Southeastern Conference championship game inside Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium. In order to reach 30, the Bulldogs will have to defeat that very same program in that very same venue Saturday afternoon (4 on CBS).
“I can recall just some of the pain that were in the seniors’ eyes after that game and just how bad they wanted that,” Georgia senior center Sedrick Van Pran said earlier this week. “I think it’s definitely something that I still hold dear in my heart, not being able to get those guys an SEC championship their senior year. It’s just a memory that I have from that game for sure.”
That loss to Nick Saban’s Crimson Tide knocked Georgia from the top spot in the College Football Playoff rankings to the third seed in the four-team spectacle, but the Bulldogs bounced back with a 34-11 shredding of Michigan in the Orange Bowl semifinal and a 33-18 topping of Alabama in the national championship contest in Indianapolis.
Georgia scored the final 20 points of its rematch with the Crimson Tide, which delivered the Bulldogs their first national championship since the 1980 season, but nobody knew then that Michigan and Alabama would serve as the first two victims of a winning streak that hit 29 last Saturday night with a 31-23 triumph at Georgia Tech.