Schultz: Get comfortable — dominance is Georgia’s new normal

INGLEWOOD, Calif. — Kirby Smart is fond of reminding us that every team is different, that each season stands alone, that there’s a “disease that creeps into your program called entitlement,” and it can crush even the giants in sports and industry.

But there are few times when a college football program breathes such rarified air and deserves to be recognized for what it has become. This is one of those moments. Hide your players and recruits, Kirby, because here’s the rat poison you probably don’t want any of them to read: Georgia is on the verge of becoming a dynasty.

You see it on scoreboards. You hear it from the crowd. You certainly smelled late Monday night on the field and in the locker room in the form of cigar smoke.

“The way this program is run, I don’t see it slowing down,” Kelee Ringo said.

Two championships in two seasons. The first one was not an aberration. The second was an affirmation of what Georgia has become. The Bulldogs were the picture of perfection, literally and figuratively, Monday night, when they completed a 15-0 season with a 65-7 dismemberment of TCU. They are the first program in a decade to win consecutive championships, going 29-1 in that span, and they’ve blown past the program that did it last: Alabama.

Nick Saban was in the stadium watching this. Wonder what he was thinking. Some history doesn’t fade. Some history foreshadows what’s coming.

“I think the coolest thing to me is in 20 years when this is cool to us,” said Stetson Bennett, who can make a nice living the rest of his life simply being Stetson Bennett.

Feel free to dream about a third straight national title. Ponder whether Smart has a chance to catch Saban at seven rings. Ask yourself this: What’s it going to take to stop Georgia? I don’t mean stopping the Bulldogs from winning the championship every season. I mean stopping them from winning several? They have players and resources and a head coach who now sits on a throne, with administrators and boosters bowing at his knee, giving him almost anything he wants.

Smart returned to his alma mater in 2016 and vowed to take what he learned about success, mostly at Alabama, and elevate Georgia. He has led the Bulldogs to two national titles, three finals appearances and two SEC championships in the last six years. He won this title after losing 15 players to the NFL Draft and others in the transfer portal, notably wide receiver Jermaine Burton, who apparently believed leaving Bennett and Georgia for Bryce Young and Alabama would give him a better chance for success (oops).

“It means everything,” Smart said when asked about building Georgia into a dominant program. “I’ll never forget the speech I heard Billy Payne give and how much Georgia meant to him. He met his wife there, and he gave back to the University of Georgia in every possible way. He helped bring the Olympics. I want to give back to a place that has meant so much to my life and to my family’s life and has given so much to us. I don’t think you can do that without honoring them with how you work and the standard you try to set. And that’s my selling point.”

Beyond excelling in recruiting and organizational skills, Smart has excelled in the most important area of ​​all: player development. Bennett exemplifies that. It took a while before the coaches acknowledged that he was the best quarterback on the roster, but Smart finally paid him back for that slight in this game. Bennett threw for 304 yards and four touchdowns. He ran for two more scores, the first QB to do that in a title game since Vince Young. Vince Young! He did all this in the first three quarters, with Georgia rolling to a 52-7 lead.

Smart let the no. 1 offense took the field early in the fourth quarter, but only so he could call timeout and have Bennett jog off and get an ovation to end his remarkable career.

Georgia fans thought the program could get to this level many times before. They had a team in 2008 with a strong-armed Matthew Stafford throwing to AJ Green and handing off Knowshon Moreno — all future NFL stars. That team got body slammed by Alabama and Florida and lost at home to Georgia Tech to end the regular season.

Do you know who was there to hug Smart and Bennett when they stepped off stage after the press conference at SoFi Stadium? Matthew Stafford.

Stafford was the quarterback everyone wanted. Bennett was the quarterback nobody wanted. Now nobody wants Bennett to leave, least of all Andrew Smart, the head coach’s 10-year-old son. Smart shared a moment from after the game when he found Andrew in the coach’s stadium office crying.

Kirby: “Why are you crying?”

Andrew: “Stetson is leaving. He’s going to go.”

Kirby: “He’s 25 years old. He’s got to go.”

A question nobody expected to ask less than two years ago: How will they ever replace Stetson Bennett?

If this is about wins and losses, he’s the best quarterback in Georgia history. I won’t start the debate about whether he should be considered as the greatest player in program history, a title generally given to a certain former running back. But I won’t run from that debate, either.

Bennett was never named an All-American. But he won two national championships, ascended from walk-on to Heisman Trophy finalist and, as Smart said, “He’s got GOAT status in Athens, Georgia, forever.”

Brock Bowers, seconding the emotion: “Those 13 jerseys are going to be around a long time.”

I just want everyone to understand that Stetson Bennett is the greatest player in the history of UGA. #StetsonBennett

— Mike Cavan (@CoachCavanUGA) January 10, 2023

In Bennett’s five postseason games the past two seasons — four Playoff games and this year’s SEC championship win over LSU — he threw 16 touchdown passes with one interception and ran for three more. He also set the standard for any two-star/three-star/no-star who others count out.

A few days after the Bulldogs ended a 41-year title drought last season, Bennett walked into Smart’s office to talk about his future. He said, ‘I don’t understand everybody’s telling me I should just ride off into the sunset and be the legendary quarterback who won a national title. That’s just not who I am,’” Smart recalled. “He’s, like, I don’t get it. Why should I do that when I have an opportunity to play again? Why don’t we go win it again?’ And I’m kind of thinking, well, that would be nice, but we lost 15 draft picks. Might not be that easy this time.”

Well, it was easy. Absurdly easy Monday night. TCU was a great story, a cute story. But TCU didn’t belong here. There will be more TCUs when the College Football Playoff expands to 12 teams, but the difference in elite-level talent between the Bulldogs and Horned Frogs was obvious.

You know that old Bum Phillips saying about Bear Bryant, “Bryant can take his’n and beat your’n, and then he can turn around and take your’n and beat his’n”? That saying doesn’t apply here, because Bryant would have gotten pounded, too. Part of that was because TCU overachieved. But a lot of that is simply because of what Smart has built at Georgia.

Get comfortable. This is the new normal.

(Photo of Kirby Smart and Stetson Bennett: Jayne Kamin-Oncea / USA Today)