ATHENS, GA – They can’t complain now. Can’t get away with politicking and promoting and posturing in five weeks when the College Football Playoff poll begins.
This is the monster the SEC created. Suck it up, and deal with it.
If it looks like the NFL, and plays out week after week like the NFL, well, as they say in the south, if you burn your ass, you have to sit on the blisters.
While Alabama’s surprising 24-21 win over No. 3 Georgia on Saturday night was the epicenter of the SEC world, heavyweight, bare knuckle fistfights played out all over the conference footprint.
Wins and losses — and more important, losses — that will significantly impact the always quirky (and unnervingly fair to a fault) CFP selection committee.
‘We were talking on the sidelines during the game,’ said Alabama offensive tackle Kadyn Proctor. ‘Georgia, night game, prime time TV, this is why you play games in this league.’
And this is how it’s playing out in the bloodbath of a conference: there has never been more uncertainty at the top, and more fluidity among the elite on a weekly basis. What professional league does that sound like?
No. 9 Texas A&M took another step toward erasing its Texas 8&5 reputation, outlasting Auburn by trading blows with the most physical team in the SEC.
All that on one pulsating, punishing weekend, with No. 7 Texas and No. 10 Oklahoma — the two blue bloods who kicked off the SEC move to mimicking the NFL by asking pretty please to join the exclusive club — sitting at home on bye weeks.
About 45 minutes after the game, after Alabama – left for dead after a season-opening loss to Florida State – had beaten Georgia and coach Kirby Smart for the seventh time in eight games, Tide athletic director Greg Byrne stood by the locker room congratulating players and tried to explain this constantly evolving beast of a conference.
‘Hopefully the playoff committee will recognize this challenge, week after week, that every team in this league goes through,’ Byrne said. ‘It’s not (comparing) two losses vs. three losses, or one loss vs. three losses. That needs to be recognized.’
Make no mistake, this is the NFL. Every week is gut-wrenching and gut-pounding. Any team can beat any other team, anywhere at any time.
And speaking of Alabama, what do we make of the team that began the season loafing in a loss at Florida State? Well, it begins with this: if you’re embattled Tide coach Kalen DeBoer and snap Georgia’s 33-game home winning streak, you get to put a period at the end of the Nick Saban is gone conversation.
And finally, blessedly, move on to the next topic.
Like this Alabama team may just be good enough to win the whole damn thing.
Germie Bernard and Isaac Horton made tough, contested catches over the middle. Jam Miller broke tackles with punishing runs, including a couple that sealed the victory. The defense made enough big plays (hello, LT Overton) to contribute to what Alabama always does: find a way to beat Georgia.
For the love of all things houndstooth, Proctor , 6-7, 366-pound star left tackle, bent down to catch a perimeter screen pass as an eligible receiver and – I swear I’m not making this up – looked like a 30-story building rumbling through the Georgia defense.
Like the old school, black and white film of Godzilla terrorizing the downtown streets. I mean, the humanity of it all.
So it should come as no surprise that when Alabama returns home next week, it will be greeted by the one player who absolutely, positively, ain’t afraid of Proctzilla. That would be Diego Pavia and — are you ready for this? — big, bad unbeaten No. 20 Vanderbilt.
The same Vanderbilt that began the Tide dive in 2024, by beating Alabama for the first time since Cornelius Vanderbilt gave two $500,000 gifts to Bishop Holland McTyeire in 1873 to found Vanderbilt. Or something like that.
Then there’s Georgia, which is a missed Tennessee field goal from two losses in September for the first time since 2011. How many teams in the nation can beat this Georgia team?
Outside the SEC, anyway.
About 90 minutes before the start of this classic, SEC commissioner Greg Sankey held an impromptu chat with a gaggle of media, patiently dodging and weaving through a maze of issues affecting college football. As the availability was wrapping up, I asked Sankey the most important question of all.
Does he see a future where changes to the CFP could affect the SEC championship game? The one game that, above all else, built this meatgrinder of a conference into something no one could’ve ever imagined.
“I’ve been on that (championship) stage, and there’s not one person standing there who doesn’t think (an SEC championship) isn’t a big deal,” Sankey said.
If it looks like the NFL, and plays out week after week like the NFL, call it the SEC and go ahead and deal with the blisters.
We’ve got two more months of this wild ride.
Matt Hayes is the senior national college football writer for USA TODAY Sports Network. Follow him on X at @MattHayesCFB.