re: 1 to 6 vs Tyler Simmons

Outside of Dawg fans, nobody wanted to see a Georgia 3peat. The media started setting it up immediately after last year's championship game. "Look at Georgia's weak schedule in 2023! It's embarassing, it's absurd, it's not fair." That narrative was repeated hundreds of times across sports media venues, as if they had discovered something never seen before. The implication, and sometimes direct statement, was that one loss should disqualify Georgia from the playoffs.

None of those proclamations was followed up with a comparative analysis of all the other schedules. Nobody ever pondered how an "easy" SEC schedule compared to a normal Big 12, Pac 12, Acc or Big 10 schedule. I guess it went without saying that teams like Oregon, Penn State, Ohio State, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Iowa, Kansas St. and Arizona were far better than lowly Missouri, Tennessee and Ole Miss. And of course, Kentucky wouldn't even be competitive against ranked teams like Louisville or Clemson.

During the 2023 UT game in Knoxville, ESPN announcers stated that UGA had't faced a single ranked opponent on the road during their 27 game undefeated streak. That was a very misleading statistic and an attempt to downplay Georgia's run of dominance. In 2022 road games, Georgia demolished both South Carolina (final ranking #23) and Miss. St (final ranking #20). Final rankings are obviously a better metric to retrospectively judge a schedule than gametime rankings. And they didn't mention that during that same span, Georgia had beaten teams with a final ranking of 2, 3, 15, 16, 4, and 2, at neutral sites.