The SEC has won between 28 and 40 college football national championships — depending on your source or choice of school colors. Saturday Down South is ranking the 10 greatest national champions, acknowledging history while bowing to progress.

No. 9: 1980 Georgia

Record: 12-0

PPG: 27.8

Allowed: 11.4

SRS: 19.48. SRS combines margin of victory and strength of schedule, where 0 is average. The higher the number, the more dominant the team. The 1980 team posted the eighth-highest total in program history.

Statistical oddity: Freshman Herschel Walker accounted for 1,686 of the Bulldogs’ 4,099 total yards in 1980, which equates to 41 percent of the offense. He also scored 15 of Georgia’s 36 touchdowns (41.7 percent). For perspective, in 2015, junior Derrick Henry accounted for 2,310 of Alabama’s 6,406 total yards, or 36 percent.

Their case for greatness: Walker’s anticipated arrival revitalized a program that suffered through a 6-5 season in 1979 and triggered the greatest three-year run in Bulldogs history.

SEC football fans had never seen anyone quite like Walker, and not simply because so few college football games were actually on television.

Herschel — nobody called him Walker except for newspaper reporters — was 6-2, 216 pounds when he left tiny Johnson County High School in Wrightsville, Georgia, just 100 miles southeast of Athens. He was as big as some college defensive lineman — in fact, he played defensive end in high school — and almost always the fastest man on the field.

He was the most sought-after high school recruit in the country, a Parade All-American who finished his career with 6,137 yards, 86 touchdowns. He carried the ball — and the hopes and dreams of an entire Bulldogs fanbase.

Walker ran for 1,615 yards, a freshman record, and still one of the 12 best totals in SEC history. Vince Dooley handed him the ball, but he didn’t hand him a starting job.

“If he was going to earn the position, he was going to have to earn it,” Dooley told Bleacher Report.

Walker guided the Bulldogs to an 8-0 start, but there were close calls as Georgia rose steadily in the rankings, from preseason No. 16 toward No. 1.

Opening day, for instance.

“My God! A freshman!”

Georgia fell behind Tennessee 9-0 before a record crowd of 95,288 in Knoxville. Soon the deficit grew to 15-2.

Walker didn’t start his first college game and, to that point, hadn’t done much.

With one carry, everything changed.

He emphatically announced his arrival with a punishing 16-yard touchdown run that came to define him.

“My God! A freshman,” Bulldogs radio voice Larry Munson exclaimed.

In an interview with ESPN long after the fact, Tennessee safety Bill Bates recalled that first — and most famous — encounter.

“We started blitzing, because we didn’t think (Walker) would be able to pick them up,” Bates told Mark Schlabach. “We had a blitz from one of the sides. He cut back to the left, and our coaches always told us to break down for a tackle. So I broke down.

“I looked into Herschel’s eyes and realized he wasn’t going to make a move. The next thing I knew, I had footprints on my chest and turned around and saw No. 34 running into the end zone for a touchdown. It was a big deal and something I’ll always remember.”

Walker added his second touchdown as Georgia escaped with a 16-15 victory.

He added three more touchdowns and 145 yards in his home debut the following week, a 42-0 blowout of Texas A&M.

In Week 3, Walker ran for 121 yards against Clemson, but he wasn’t the reason the Bulldogs won.

Scott Woerner returned a punt for a touchdown and picked off a pass to prevent a Clemson touchdown, allowing the Bulldogs to survive 20-16.

“Scott Woerner saved our butts,” quarterback Buck Belue said in a video tribute to the 1980 team. “He just played his you-know-what off.”

Five victories later, an undefeated and No. 2-ranked Georgia team headed to Jacksonville, Fla., for its annual cocktail party against the Gators.

They’re still talking about what happened next.

Run Lindsay! The 93-yard miracle

Lewis Grizzard, a great American, was one of the finest southern sportswriters to ever sit in front of a typewriter. He also was a devoted Georgia graduate and diehard Bulldogs football fan.

Grizzard, of course, was at the 1980 Georgia-Florida game.

This was not a game to be missed — though somehow he did.

“I must make one confession here,” Grizzard later wrote in a column for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “I did it, and I must suffer the consequences.

“I gave up at Jacksonville Saturday afternoon. Florida had the ball. Florida had the lead. There was only three minutes to play. I left the stadium. I was in the street when the miracle came.”

The miracle was this: Trailing, with just over a minute left and acres to go, Belue scrambled to escape pressure and threw on the run to Lindsay Scott, who did the rest.

The third-down play started on Georgia’s 7-yard line and ended 93 yards later with Munson delivering one of the most famous calls in Bulldogs history:

Georgia 26, Florida 21.

Goals to go.

Help from rival sets up title

That same afternoon, rival Georgia Tech tied Notre Dame, clearing the way for Georgia to leap to No. 1 in the AP Poll.

Georgia won its next two games, including a 38-20 drubbing of the Yellow Jackets in which Walker ran for 205 yards and three more touchdowns.

Georgia was 11-0 and headed to the Sugar Bowl to face Notre Dame.

The SEC doesn’t include Walker’s bowl stats, but oh, how they counted that night. He overcame a shoulder injury on his first carry to rush for 150 yards and two scores.

He carried Georgia to its first undefeated season since 1946 and second consensus national championship.

“Nobody in that day and time — or in today’s date and time for that matter — was a one-on-one matchup for Herschel,” Bobby Jackson, Tennessee’s defensive coordinator from 1980-82, told ESPN. “He was one of the greatest, if not the greatest, that ever played the game.”

And the primary reason the 1980 Georgia Bulldogs not only won the national championship but rank among the 10 greatest SEC teams to do so.

RELATED: No. 10 1961 Alabama