Kirby Smart Can’t Win, Sonny Dykes Can’t Lose in Title Game

Even if Georgia wins big, the Horned Frogs have already won whether they get trophy or not

Author:
Andy Hodges
Publish date:
Jan 8, 2023

Georgia coach Kirby Smart can't win Monday night and TCU coach Sonny Dykes can't lose.

No matter who gets the trophy at the end, that's the case

That tends to happen when everybody is predicting a monumental mismatch. While unsorting nearly six decades of watching college football, it's hard to recall a bigger upset than this would be.

Kirby Smart-CFP-Georgia — Georgia Bulldogs coach Kirby Smart talks to media on media day before the 2023 CFP national championship game at Los Angeles Convention Center. (Robert Hanashiro / USA TODAY Sports)

The Bulldogs were expected to be in this spot. It's no surprise they are here, although they might have cut it a little closer than their fans wanted in the semifinal against Ohio State.

When you have to rely on an accurate field goal kicker to miss one on New Year's Eve, that's a lot of hope.

TCU's win over Michigan earlier that day is so far the biggest surprise. Maybe not that they advanced to the title game, but the fact they did by holding the lead instead of some huge comeback like they often did during the year.

Now we are left with Georgia against a team that hasn't really done anything that relevant on the national stage since they had a guy named Sammy Baugh, then three years later Davey O'Brien the stars for Dutch Meyer. You younger kids can Google those two players, O'Brien won the Heisman Trophy.

In my time I covered the Horned Frogs at times when they were so bad you almost felt sorry for them on the field. You wondered, seriously, if they could beat a good high school team.

At one time, proud alum Dan Jenkins, who was one of the best sportswriters that ever lived for Sports Illustrated (he also had a paranoid fear of snakes, but that's for a different day), was in the press box for a Horned Frogs' game with Arkansas, slammed his notebook on the counter and proclaimed loudly, "TCU will never beat Arkansas!"

The school actually considered dropping football at one point because they were so terrible at trying to play the game.

Sonny Dykes-TCU-CFP — TCU Horned Frogs coach Sonny Dykes talks with media on media day before the 2023 CFP national championship game at Los Angeles Convention Center. (Robert Hanashiro / USA TODAY Sports)

All of that turned around with Gary Patterson getting the time and enough money to get them respectable again. Dykes has come in and taken them farther than just about any TCU fan could even expect.

Smart focuses on his team. He's said all week before this game he hasn't mentioned back-to-back championships a single time.

If Georgia plays it's best game of the year, the Horned Frogs will have a hard time carrying the hardware to Fort Worth.

Dykes knows all this, but you never really want to assume an over-achieving team can't have all the stars align perfectly for one game.

They have all season.