On Oct. 19, Georgia went to sold-out Darrell K. Royal Memorial Stadium and dominated then-top-ranked Texas 30-15, notching seven sacks and forcing three fumbles in one of the most impressive defensive performances by any team this season.
Barely three weeks later, the latest AP Poll has the Horns (8-1) back up to No. 3 in the country, while Georgia (7-2), which lost 28-10 at Ole Miss on Saturday, dropped to No. 11.
It is a classic example of the oldest tradition in college football polls: ranking teams by number of losses. Texas has one. Georgia has two.
But in this new era of mega-conferences, in which two teams in the same league can play wildly different schedules, defaulting to the number of losses is just plain lazy. The College Football Playoff selection committee, which issues its new rankings Tuesday at 8:30 p.m. ET, needs to do better.
Kirby Smart’s Bulldogs have already played three current top-10 teams — Alabama (7-2), Texas and Ole Miss (8-2) — all on the road. And they played a fourth Top 25 team, Clemson (7-2), at a neutral site. The Dawgs are 2-2 in those games, beating Texas and Clemson (34-3) handily, losing a close game at Alabama (41-34) and losing badly at Ole Miss.
Texas, for its part, has played one current Top 25 team — Georgia — which it lost to at home by two touchdowns.
The Athletic looked at four rankings of strength of schedule. Georgia’s schedule was No. 1 in three of them and No. 3 in the other. Texas’ ranged from No. 46 to No. 80. Georgia has played six road/neutral-site games and just three home games. Texas is the exact opposite with six home games and three road/neutral-site games.
Georgia should arguably be ranked above Texas, not eight spots behind it, given those disparate resumes — not to mention the Dawgs played the Horns and won by 15 points.
Georgia has not looked great recently, especially on offense, but that’s at least in part because it has played such a brutal schedule. The more elite opponents a team plays, the more opportunities it has to lose, especially on the road. If Texas — or Oregon or Ohio State, for that matter — had already played three top-10 teams and a fourth Top 25 team, all away from home, it’d likely have an extra loss by now, too.
The Horns belong somewhere in the top 10. Seven of their eight wins have been lopsided. And just about every computer rating has them in the top three as well.
But the committee tells us all the time how much importance it places on resumes, and Texas has not even beaten anyone in the AP’s “others receiving votes” category. Its “best” win to date was at 6-4 Vanderbilt. Its only other foe with a winning record is 6-3 Colorado State.
The Horns will get one more chance to meaningfully boost their resume when they visit top-15 Texas A&M on Nov. 30. If they win and finish 7-1 in the conference, they will be heading to the SEC Championship Game, where they can earn an automatic CFP berth and render all of this moot.
In the meantime, Georgia is playing yet another top-10 foe this weekend, 8-1 Tennessee, at home. Beating the Vols would give Georgia three Top 25 wins, something only one other team in the country, Alabama, can claim. That would be three more than Texas would have, given it faces unranked Arkansas this week.
One would hope the AP voters and committee will use common sense at that point and flip them. But, of course, Georgia would still have one more loss than Texas. It might be asking too much for pollsters to scrap an 80-year-old tradition.
(Photos of Georgia’s Raylen Wilson, Texas’ Quintrevion Wisner: Petre Thomas, Scott Wachter / Imagn Images)
