Should we just pencil in another Alabama-Georgia national title game in 2023?
The College Football Playoff national championship game following the 2022 season will be held on Monday, Jan. 9, 2023 at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles – the first time L.A. will host the game. Perhaps we should just skip ahead and put SEC rivals Alabama and Georgia in it again? Oddsmakers list the Crimson Tide as +325 favorites to win it all next season and Georgia at +350.
The Dawgs closed as 2.5-point favorites for Monday night’s title game against Alabama in Indianapolis and rallied for a 33-18 victory, Georgia’s first national championship since 1980. Would UGA have won if star Bama receiver Jameson Williams hadn’t suffered an apparent serious knee injury on a long catch early in the second quarter? That will no doubt be debated by Tide fans for years; their other star wideout, John Metchie III, missed it as he was injured in Alabama’s SEC Championship Game win over Georgia.
Tide coach Nick Saban entered this season having never lost any game to one of his former assistant coaches but ended up losing two: Against Jimbo Fisher and Texas A&M in the regular season and then Kirby Smart and Georgia on Monday.
Dawgs, Tide Not Scheduled To Play
Both schools will be in the Top 5 of the preseason polls when those come out next summer, with Alabama most likely No. 1 thanks to returns of Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback Bryce Young and superstar defensive player Will Anderson Jr., among others. Yes, Saban will lose a lot of talent, but he simply plugs in a new five-star recruit. The Tide open 2022 on Sept. 3 at home vs. Utah State.
Georgia opens next season rather ironically in Atlanta on Sept. 3 at Oregon (+3300); the Ducks’ head coach is Dan Lanning, who was the coordinator of Georgia’s defense this season and had essentially only a few hours to enjoy the championship before heading to Eugene for good. UGA will lose a lot of that spectacular defense and QB Stetson Bennett hasn’t said yet whether he will return next season.
Alabama and Georgia don’t play in the 2022 regular season but probably will in the SEC title game again.
Big Ten school Ohio State is next on the NCAAF futures odds at +650 with the return of star quarterback CJ Stroud, who was the Heisman favorite for a while in the 2021 regular season but ended up finishing fourth. OSU opens with a terrific matchup on Sept. 3 in Columbus against Notre Dame (+2000). Michigan, which finally beat Ohio State in the 2021 season on the way to the Big Ten title and spot in the national semifinals, is +1800. But will Coach Jim Harbaugh stick around or head to the NFL?
Cincinnati, the other national semifinalist, is a +8000 long shot and it’s frankly going to be near impossible for the Bearcats to get back to the semifinals as everyone saw how outmatched they were against Alabama.
