Georgia-Alabama just means less? With playoff expansion, college football faces new outlook

No. 1 Georgia and No. 4 Alabama have met six times since 2018 but just once in the regular season, an Alabama win in 2020. The Crimson Tide would take home the national championship that season and Georgia the ensuing pair, with the Bulldogs’ only loss during that two-year span coming to, yes, Alabama.

Separated by divisions throughout this span, the two heavyweights have still managed to cross paths in some of the biggest, high-stakes games of the era:

• The College Football Playoff national championship game for the 2017 season, an Alabama win in overtime.
• The 2018 SEC championship game, another Alabama win.
• The 2021 SEC championship game, again taken by the Crimson Tide.
• The 2022 national championship game, the lone Georgia win against Alabama under Kirby Smart.
• And last year’s SEC championship game, an Alabama win that sent the Tide into the playoff while eliminating the Bulldogs.

For a number of reasons, this one feels different. For one, the series has a new head coach in Alabama’s Kalen DeBoer, hired this offseason to replace Nick Saban.

"You don’t have to pull anything as far as energy and enthusiasm out of them to get ready for our first SEC game against Georgia, you know," DeBoer said.

In terms of a national impact, the biggest change from this rivalry’s recent past is in the immediate fallout from Saturday night’s matchup in Tuscaloosa. To misquote the SEC, this one just means … less?

The impact on the College Football Playoff

The shift to the 12-team playoff format removes the winner-take-all mentality that has gripped this series since Smart ushered in a new era of Georgia dominance. While the winner will be in the driver’s seat for the playoff, the loser is no longer eliminated from contention, or even dropped to the back of the line among SEC contenders.

That raises the question: In this new era of an expanded postseason, what does a single regular-season game really mean — even one involving the two most powerful programs in the Bowl Subdivision?

No team during the four-team era reached the playoff with more than one loss, though several did advance to the national semifinals without winning a conference championship.

The math behind the 12-team format won’t be settled until the selection committee unveils this year’s bracket in early December. But the expectation is that every Power Four team with two or fewer losses would be in contention for an at-large bid.

If so, that drains Saturday night’s matchup of the risk and reward that has recently defined this series. Every other meeting since 2018 has decided who flat-out wins a national championship or, at a minimum, which of the two teams would get the chance to compete for one. What does it mean for this rivalry when the only impact may be on playoff seeding? What does that mean for the state of college football’s regular season?

"Win or lose, the next one's going to be really hard and the next one's going to be really hard and the next one's going to be really hard. They all are hard," Smart said. "They've got a tremendous team. I have nothing but respect for Kalen DeBoer and what he's done with that team and that staff. I think he's done a great job of putting them in a position to grow and get better, and they've gotten better with each game. So we need to do the same this week."

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What the game means for Alabama, Georgia

Regardless of the changes brought on by the new postseason format, Saturday night’s result will continue to shape the perception of which team is the favorite in the SEC and, by extension, the entire FBS.

Already ensconced as the No. 1 team in the US LBM Coaches Poll since the preseason, a win would reclaim many of the first-place votes Georgia has lost to No. 2 Texas amid the Longhorns’ unbeaten start. An Alabama victory would give the Crimson Tide their own case for No. 1.

In terms of influencing the playoff, the game will shape seeding and the path each team would have to take to win the national championship.

The winner will be favored to win the SEC, finish in the top four of the final rankings and earn a bye through the playoff’s opening round. In this expanded bracket, a top-four team would need three wins to capture the national championship: in the quarterfinals, the semifinals and final.

The loser may be relegated to one of the at-large bids, requiring an opening-round game — very likely played at home — before advancing to a quarterfinal matchup with one of the Power Four conference champions.

But in an SEC that now lacks divisions, the loser can still secure a top-four finish by reaching and winning the conference championship game.

That fact helps to explain why this year’s matchup means less than ever before: Alabama and Georgia could very well meet again in early December to settle the conference and they could face off again in the playoff, making Saturday the first of three possible meetings this season alone.

Saturday’s impact on Kalen DeBoer

The Bulldogs and Crimson Tide will meet against the backdrop of this season’s biggest coaching storyline: DeBoer’s arrival from Washington to replace the architect of a historic dynasty.

The signs have been mostly positive through three games. Alabama started with an easy win against Western Kentucky, struggled at times against South Florida before putting the Bulls away with a fourth-quarter scoring barrage, and then rolled over Wisconsin in a rare nonconference game in Big Ten country.

Georgia is the first of five SEC games the Crimson Tide will face against teams currently ranked in the Coaches Poll, joining No. 11 Missouri at home and No. 6 Tennessee, No. 13 LSU and No. 18 Oklahoma on the road.

"This is a new team, this is a new season, and that’s why I always make sure we’re emphasizing that this is the 2024 Alabama Crimson Tide football team," DeBoer said. "But there’s certainly learning moments that you have when you’ve been through the experiences."

DeBoer can look at his predecessor to see how a win Saturday could electrify his tenure. After winning seven games in his debut season, Saban sparked Alabama’s return to prominence in 2008 with a high-profile win at Georgia. The 41-30 victory, the Crimson Tide’s first under Saban against an elite SEC opponent, showcased a program quickly skyrocketing into national championship contention. They'd win the first of six titles with Saban the following season.

A win would do the same for DeBoer. But a loss would draw immediate and negative comparisons to Saban, who dominated the head-to-head competition against Smart and the Bulldogs.

At a time when new coaches at marquee programs have to strike fast or risk the consequences of an early failure — Florida’s Billy Napier is a prime example among active coaches — the result on Saturday promises to define DeBoer’s start with the Crimson Tide, for better or for worse.

"It’s ‘Welcome to the SEC,’ right? But it’s going to happen to us, right?” said DeBoer. "There’s going to be a lot of great teams that we’re going to face."