Texas making Georgia an underdog for the first time in 50 games is understandable, but nah
As if Kirby Smart and the Georgia Bulldogs didn’t have enough motivation going into Saturday’s game against No. 1 Texas, oddsmakers made sure there was a little more material to put on the bulletin board this week.
The No. 5 Bulldogs are underdogs against the Longhorns, snapping a streak of 49-straight games as favorites. The last time Georgia wasn’t favored to win a game was Week 1 of the 2021 season against Clemson — a game Georgia won 10-3.
But it isn’t simply being an underdog that should offend the Bulldogs, it’s that the spread is 4.5 points — which is beyond a typical home-field advantage — and it’s against Texas.
Georgia has been a standard of the SEC for several years now, back-to-back national champions in 2021 and 2022 and preseason favorites to win the SEC and national title again this year. To be underdogs just a few weeks later in their first meeting against a league newcomer has to be incredibly humbling, no matter how good Texas is.
The last time Georgia was an underdog was the opening game of the 2021 season
Are you picking the Bulldogs to beat the Longhorns on Saturday? pic.twitter.com/YWWwxcP4JU
— ESPN BET (@ESPNBET) October 17, 2024
If this sounds like the type of ignorance spewed from someone who only helicopters in and out of the college football season rather than ride every ebb and flow of each play and down, it’s because it is.
Maybe Texas is actually that much better than Georgia. I don’t know.
But what I do know is the extreme highs and lows of a season usually aren’t great predictors of future performance, and if Georgia is only an underdog because of a two-week stretch where it barely beat Kentucky on the road and barely lost to its biggest SEC rival and No. 4-ranked Alabama, then Texas probably has a tougher game coming than the line suggests.
That two-week stretch is exactly when Georgia’s national championship odds began to slip, from +350 before the Alabama loss to +650 after. In that same period, undefeated Texas climbed pass the Bulldogs to their current +375 odds, which lead the nation.
But not to minimize how good Texas has been, Georgia may still be every bit the team oddsmakers projected entering the season — which was better than Texas. And after two straight wins, Georgia’s odds are slowly creeping back up at +450, which is tied with Ohio State for second. Something tells me they won’t be satisfied until they’re No. 1 again.