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College Football Playoff: Georgia bound for Sugar Bowl

On3 imageby:Jake Rowe•12/08/24•

JakeMRowe

Kirby Smart Georgia
(Conor Dillon/UGAAA)

Georgia is in the 12-team College Football Playoff field as the No. 2 seed and it will next play in the Sugar Bowl. The College Football Playoff committee announced that it is sending the Bulldogs to New Orleans for a New Year’s Day matchup with the winner of No. 7-seed Notre Dame and No. 10-seed Indiana.

That gives the Bulldogs three full weeks off before their gauntlet of a 2024 schedule continues. Georgia has already played four games against teams in the College Football Playoff field, going 4-0 in those battles. It beat Clemson 34-3 in the season opener, Tennessee 31-17 in Athens, and Texas twice — once in Austin and once in Mercedes-Benz Stadium.

It took overtime to get that second win over Texas yesterday as the Bulldogs trailed 6-3 at the half. They had to turn to backup quarterback Gunner Stockton for the final two quarters due to an arm injury sustained by Carson Beck on the final play of the first half. Georgia scored 13 points in the second half and got six walk-off points in overtime for the 22-19 win. That win locked it in for a first-round bye.

The Bulldogs were handed two losses, both on the road, to teams that just missed the College Football Playoff field. Alabama and Ole Miss were two of the first four teams out, both collecting three losses along the way. In all, Georgia has played six games agains teams ranked inside the top 16.

It’s the third time in the past four years that the Bulldogs have made the playoff and the first two times went quite well. UGA won back-to-back National Championships in 2021 and 2022, going 29-1 in that span and winning three of its four playoff games, including both title games, by double digits.

First-round playoff games are set for one game on Friday, December 20 and three more on Saturday, December 31. Those games will take place on the campuses of Texas, Penn State, Notre Dame, and Ohio State.

The second-round games are set for bowl sites with Oregon in the Rose Bowl with a Big10 tie-in. The Chick-Fil-A Peach Bowl and the Fiesta Bowl lack specific conference tie ins.

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