I’d like to get out ahead of something.

I will defend Georgia and its cakewalk to 12-0.

People already are picking it apart, and for obvious reasons. Nobody wants to see the 2-time defending champs be double-digit favorites every week en route to the SEC Championship. Granted, nobody pushes back when Ohio State gets that kind of path because the Buckeyes are the team that usually finds a way to mess that up.

The Dawgs, however, seem incredibly likely to have a perfect regular season. The nonconference schedule was supposed to have a trip to Oklahoma. Say what you will about the rebuilding Sooners, but it at least would’ve been seen as a “move the needle” game wherein we would’ve talked all about the Rose Bowl rematch instead of the fact that UGA would’ve been a significant favorite against a team fresh off a 6-win season.

The cancelation was the byproduct of Oklahoma joining the SEC, starting in 2024. You can’t have a home-and-home series with matchups occurring prior to that (2023) and after that (2031). The 2031 game was canceled, and in no world did it make any financial sense for Georgia to play a one-off in Norman in 2023. There’s a reason why these things are scheduled as home-and-homes. So because of what the conference did, Georgia was left with a decision: play at Oklahoma with no return guarantee, or cancel and replace it with … Ball State.

Ah, now is the part where someone wants to say “Georgia could’ve played a tougher opponent than that.”

Sure, guy. Tell me all the Power 5 teams that had open spots in their nonconference schedules when this became official in September. Athletic directors schedule these matchups a decade in advance.

Besides, Georgia is the team that never takes the easy way out in nonconference play. The Dawgs are still playing Georgia Tech, so it’s not like they’ll only have 8 Power 5 matchups. In fact, this is the first time that Georgia will only have 1 Power 5 nonconference game since 2018. Unlike nearly every other SEC team, UGA actually makes it a point to play 10 Power 5 teams in a given regular season.

Actually, Georgia has not 1, not 2, but 3 nonconference games against Power 5 teams each year from 2026-30. The Dawgs don’t duck anybody.

Also, let’s use some context here. If Georgia gets to an SEC Championship at 12-0, there will be some who argue that with a loss, it won’t deserve to make the field. You know the type. It’s the anti-SEC crew that would rather watch the sport crumble to the ground before giving the SEC credit for its dominance.

I’m usually the person who says that previous years shouldn’t matter for a Playoff résumé. You have to treat the résumé for what it is within that timeframe.

But tie goes to the 2-time defending champs. Sorry, everyone else.

If we’re having a debate about 12-1 Georgia and 12-1 Michigan or USC, and there isn’t some massive disparity in quality wins, give me Georgia, AKA the team that went 4-0 in its past 4 Playoff games and who had as many Playoff wins in the last season alone than the entire Big Ten, Big 12 and Pac-12 combined in the last 8 years.

That’s the other part of this that the Georgia schedule haters need to remember. Nobody is getting a cakewalk to a national championship. This isn’t 1945 where you can play 9 games and hope the voters like you enough to vote you No. 1.

If UGA does start 12-0, great. It’ll still need to beat potentially 3 consecutive top-5 teams to win it all. If the Dawgs 3-peat, they’ll have earned it.

Much like we criticized 2018 Clemson for getting a favorable path to 12-0, we all shut up when the Tigers kicked the tar out of Alabama in the national championship and handed Nick Saban his worst loss since arriving in Tuscaloosa. If UGA goes 12-0 and then it loses in the SEC Championship and in the Playoff semifinal, OK, tee off. At that point, it would be fair to question if UGA’s schedule perhaps masked some of its issues.

But we’re not at that point. Instead, we’re at the point where some people are pre-mad because they’re already bored with Georgia winning it all and nothing scares you about that schedule. The irony is that nothing scares you about that schedule because the toughest game on it, at Tennessee, is a rematch of last year’s blowout in Athens.

For 99% of teams, traveling to face an 11-win team would be a major offseason talking point. Georgia isn’t most teams. It’s the team that hasn’t lost a regular-season game since Nov. 7, 2020. It’s the team that hasn’t lost a home game in the 2020s. It’s the team that is 12-1 against AP Top 25 teams in the past 2 years alone with the lone blemish coming when Bryce Young delivered a performance for the ages in the 2021 SEC Championship.

People want to see Georgia challenged. They don’t want to see Georgia eating on the sidelines like it was in the midst of the TCU game.

On second thought, this was pretty remarkable:

We do this weird thing in sports where we get bored with dominance. In an ideal world for the consuming public, Georgia would face the entire preseason top 10. That’s not reality, though.

Reality is that Georgia has distanced itself so far from the pack that there are very few matchups that truly move the needle when Alabama or LSU aren’t the crossover matchup. On the bright side for the rest of us, the SEC schedule will change in 2024. Soon, we won’t have divisions limiting Georgia’s opponents, and we’ll be able to watch the Dawgs face some new regular-season challenges.

For now, though, take my advice.

Get angry about something else.