The effects of college football’s new 12-team playoff could be felt Saturday night during Alabama’s riveting 41-34 victory over Georgia at Bryant-Denny Stadium and afterward as well.
This was not January 2022, when Kirby Smart’s Bulldogs exorcised a lot of demons in Indianapolis with a 33-18 downing of the Crimson Tide for the program’s first national championship since the 1980 season. This also was not last December, when Nick Saban’s Tide stunned Georgia 27-24 in the Southeastern Conference title contest in Atlanta to land the fourth spot in the final four-team field for the College Football Playoff and send the Bulldogs to an unprecedented fall from No. 1 to No. 6 in the CFP rankings.
Saturday night in Tuscaloosa didn’t contain any ramifications that significant. It was simply a wild ride in the regular season, something that Tom Brady and Peyton Manning provided for years in the NFL when the New England Patriots and Indianapolis Colts got together.
“The season goes on,” Georgia quarterback Carson Beck said. “It’s week by week and month by month, and that’s regardless of a win or a loss. Obviously we play to win every single game, but with the playoff, we’re definitely not out of it.”
Due to the sport’s silly landscape that contains two powerful conferences and four conference champions guaranteed first-round playoff byes, SEC teams that don’t win the league title will be vying for the fifth and sixth seeds in the expanded format. The fifth and sixth seeds have first-round games on their campuses before likely facing the champions of the ACC and the Big 12 at neutral sites.