We all know the Georgia Bulldogs are the boogeyman of college football. Nobody can handle Kirby Smart and Georgia except Alabama. With revenge in play this weekend for the SEC Championship Game, former All-American David Pollack is urging Kirby Smart to let go of the idea of settling the score. He wants him to chase a conference title for the greater good (a guaranteed deeper playoff run).

“If Georgia avenges its only loss, that might be the debate,” David Pollack said on his See Ball, Get Ball podcast. If you’re going, ‘Hey, I’m Georgia. I lost barely to Alabama, but I beat Alabama late in the season. So the only loss I had, I redeemed myself.’”

Kirby Smart is 116-20 in Athens, and almost 44% of his losses have come at the hands of Alabama. If Georgia beats Alabama in this weekend’s SEC Championship Game, then Kirby Smart would be 2-7 against Alabama and most likely locked into the No. 2 seed in the playoff.

First-round bye, playing a lower-ranked program, home-field advantage? Wrong.

But if you look at last season’s top-four seeds, you’d think twice.

“I think you can see that we need to talk about that too, like where you want to be in these seedings. Because again last year, this is how many people won out of the byes — zero. Nobody won out of the bye week.”

Last season, all four of the top-seeded teams that earned a first-round bye ended up losing their very next game, which were the quarterfinals. The No. 1-ranked undefeated Oregon Ducks got handled by the No. 8-ranked Ohio State.

Even the No. 2-seeded Georgia barely put double-digit scores on the bottom-seeded Notre Dame in the quarterfinals. You might ask: what’s the best seed to land, then? The No. 5 seed. David Pollack doubled down on the advantage:

“Five is a great place to be. Home playoff game against a team that I probably can’t lose to, and I’m so much more talented than. If you look at the rankings and look who gets the home team, did you look at that like?”

If Georgia loses to Alabama in the conference title game, its ranking will probably drop to a No. 5 seed. The No. 5 seed team will most likely play the No. 12 Miami Hurricanes in the first-round playoff game. The winner of this game would then advance to the quarterfinals to play the No. 4 seed, Texas Tech or BYU.

The Red Raiders might cause some trouble for Kirby Smart, but that is for another day. Although it may not be ideal or ethical to lose the SEC title, putting the team in the best position to win the natty should be every head coach’s priority.

Georgia Bulldogs vs Bama: SEC Championship odds

The betting experts have Georgia as a slight favorite—only 2.5 points. Essentially, they’re saying these two teams are pretty evenly matched. The total points for the game are set at 47.5, indicating that people expect a tight, defensive battle. Interestingly, while Georgia is the favorite on paper, some prediction models actually think Bama has a better shot at winning the whole thing.

When you look at the statistics, both teams have stout defenses, ranking 11th and 12th in the nation for points allowed per game (Alabama: 16.5, Georgia: 16.7). The last time they played this season, Alabama won 24-21 in a tight match where Georgia actually out-rushed the Tide significantly (227 rushing yards for Georgia vs. 117 for Alabama).

A notable statistic: Alabama has been almost unstoppable in close games lately and has historically enjoyed beating Georgia when they are the underdogs in this specific title game.

Alabama has been an underdog in six of its last ten matchups against Georgia and has won five of those games outright. They are also undefeated in one-score games since 2023. Expert picks are split, but many lean towards the underdog Crimson Tide.

However, it’s a win-win situation for Kirby Smart either way.