College Football

Georgia dominates TCU to repeat: 3 takeaways from CFP National Championship

Updated Jan. 10, 2023 10:37 a.m. ET

INGLEWOOD, Calif. — Across 41 years since its initial ascent to the college football throne in 1980, Georgia was perennially labeled as an underachiever, with disappointment baked into the life of those associated with the program as much as black and red.

Every close call, every bounce of the ball, every big moment on the precipice of turning the corner ended in much the same fashion year after year for a team that had as many natural advantages in college football as any. The Bulldogs produced some of the most indelible moments in the sport's history and won plenty, but never quite enough to quench the insatiable appetite of their rabid fan base who knew their capability to do much more and reach the final mountaintop.

Such times are now an afterthought. After dispatching No. 3 TCU 65-7 with ease at SoFi Stadium on Monday night — the most points a team has scored in championship game history — Georgia has fully shed its underachieving label and earned a new one: the gold standard of the sport.

How else to describe a program that became the first to win back-to-back national championships in the playoff era and just the third since head coach Kirby Smart left his alma mater in Athens as an undersized defensive back fully aware of the differences between expectations and reality between the lines?

How else to define just the third team to win 15 games since college football was in its infancy in the 1800s or one of just two programs that have spent every week in the past six seasons ranked in the top 25?

Certainly, there are few better descriptors after the national title game became a 60-minute coronation given Georgia's 31-point halftime lead and six consecutive scoring drives to open the game. The Bulldogs didn't even punt until the third quarter while the Horned Frogs converted just one third down — via defensive penalty — in the first 43 minutes of action.

Just as their golden shoulder pads say ‘SAVAGE' in bold typeface, they turned the final game of the season into a similar statement to the rest of the college football world.

No longer is Georgia an underachiever, the team that was always good but never quite great.

Now, the Bulldogs are the sport's overlords and the new standard by which all must measure themselves.

Here are three other takeaways from the College Football Playoff National Championship:

1. Stetson Bennett forever etched in CFB lore

Just a few hours before the national title game kicked off on an abnormally windy and rainy Southern California day, the National Football Foundation announced the Class of 2023 that would be inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in December. It was a star-studded group, from USC's electrifying tailback Reggie Bush to fellow Heisman Trophy winner Tim Tebow to former Georgia head coach Mark Richt.

Georgia quarterback Stetson Bennett won't receive such an honor as things stand. He never earned first-team All-America honors, a condition of being selected, nor was he ever even selected as the best signal-caller in the SEC over the course of his career.

Yet the one-time walk-on who held just one scholarship offer and needed a one-year detour to the junior college ranks before earning the starting job in Athens will forever be etched into college football lore after capping off his career Monday night by reminding everybody that no matter how normal he might look, he's also an incredible player that just led Georgia to a 29-3 mark and back-to-back national championships.

The senior from Blackshear reinforced that on just about every dropback, throwing for 304 yards and four touchdowns while rushing for two more scores. His 226.9 quarterback rating seemed to defy belief yet kept shooting up with each passing drive. Every pass seemed to be guided along a rope into the waiting arms of its intended target, with a beauty over the shoulder to Adonai Mitchell for a 22-yarder just before halftime and a 37-yard floater to a wide-open Ladd McConkey that stretched the lead to double-digits and indicated that TCU would be in for a long, long night.

Bennett gets knocked for his height, his age or his arm strength seemingly at every opportunity by those outside of Athens. But once again it was the veteran who reminded the rest of the country that he's just as big of a reason for Georgia's success as any of the future NFL pros the team is bound to send to the league over the next year or two.

2. Championship showing doesn't diminish TCU's Cinderella run

On the Horned Frogs' first snap of the championship game, their normally reliable offense wound up false starting amid a voracious crowd of 72,628 yelling at maximum capacity at SoFi Stadium. Things did not improve much for a program that entered embracing the role of the underdog and ended up cementing its status as one quite early on.

Quarterback Max Duggan threw for just 152 yards and seemed to be running for his life most of the night against a Bulldogs defense that set up shop in the backfield. He took five sacks, was rushed into numerous overthrows and tossed two rough interceptions that were far off the mark of their intended targets. Tailback Emari Demercado, who grew up just a few blocks away, mustered just 59 yards as the starter in place of the injured Kendre Miller, while normally reliable senior receiver Derius Davis (101 yards on eight catches) fumbled on the team's first run play.

It was a rough night on the sport's biggest stage, to say the least. However, it should not come to define this group after a season's worth of incredible moments. TCU's presence in L.A. on Monday night reflected an incredible Cinderella run filled with too many comebacks to list and one of the best seasons in school history.

In Sonny Dykes' first season in charge in Fort Worth, TCU won seven more games than it did in 2021 – the second-best mark in all of FBS. It became the first Texas program to play in the title game since the CFP was created and fell just short of becoming the first national champion to have a losing record the year prior since 1965.

Duggan was the Heisman Trophy runner-up. Wideout Quentin Johnston developed into a sure-fire first-round pick and one of the best players in the game.

It was a magical and unexpected season for the ages and nothing the Horned Frogs did against Georgia should take away from what happened over the previous 14 games that led them there.

3. Brock Bowers and Javon Bullard somehow will be back in 2023 — just like Georgia

Just about the only drama left in the second half of the game ended with 13:25 on the clock. That's when Smart called a timeout mid-drive, not because of a bad look or issue with a play call, but rather to sub out his star quarterback to a deserving sendoff from the Georgia faithful who had made their way west to witness history.

Standing behind on the field clapping along with them was the rest of the offense — a group that signaled this Bulldogs run has a chance to continue well into 2023 and beyond.

Take tight end Brock Bowers, who would probably get drafted in the top 10 this spring if allowed. The California native was his normal unstoppable self, notching 152 yards and a touchdown in the title game and nearly out-gaining TCU by himself. He's lost just a single game in his college football career and, given that just one ranked team (Tennessee) is likely to appear on the schedule to start next year, it may be a stat that remains in place until 2024 at the earliest.

Or there was fellow sophomore Javon Bullard, making just his ninth start of the campaign and almost single-handedly ending the Horned Frogs' hopes of holding up that big golden trophy. The defensive back ended up recovering a fumble on the second series of the game that teammate Christopher Smith forced then notched back-to-back interceptions late in the second quarter.

Freshman tailback Branson Robinson even got into the action, rising from fourth-string tailback behind a senior-laden group to put the finishing touches on the scoreboard with a 19-yard touchdown scamper that showcased once again how far ahead of its competition Georgia was this season.

All of which is to say, these championship runs for the new standard in college football seem to show no signs of slowing.

Bryan Fischer is a college football writer for FOX Sports. He has been covering college athletics for nearly two decades at outlets such as NBC Sports, CBS Sports, Yahoo! Sports and NFL.com among others. Follow him on Twitter at @BryanDFischer.

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