On paper, the College Football Playoff national title match between No. 1 Georgia and the number 3 TCU Not a heavyweight match. It’s like Mike Tyson versus Glass Joe in Mike Tyson’s punch!!
It is like a tall blade of grass compared to a lawn mower. Its Judge Aaron compared to slow pitchers.
It’s a matter of disproportion, and the lineup these teams have built — and how they’ve built them — underscores how different this national title game is.
TCU vs. Georgia: David vs. Goliath?
After a 2021 season that culminated in Georgia winning its first national championship in four decades, the Bulldogs have lost 14 starts to the best team in the sport and the best defense the SEC has ever seen in 10 years.
For most other programs, that’s a stumbling block. In the modern version of the sport, it also means that coaches across the entire staff immediately access the ever-expanding transfer portal to find the right plug-and-play players. suit their needs.
In the state of MichiganMel Tucker used the portal to flip her show from May 2, 2020 to February 11, 2021. At USCLincoln Riley used the transfer portal to turn a program that ended August 4, 2021, to March 11 in just over a calendar year.
These are just two examples of head coaches turning to the development and evaluation of other programs for their benefit. Recently, prestige, brands and the promise of making money in the form of names, images, and similarities mean that the rich are getting richer and richer.
Alabama is an example of this, with influential starters playing the 2022 season in Tuscaloosa after starting their careers elsewhere, including defenders Henry To’o To’o (who started his career at Tennessee), wide receiver Jermaine Burton (Georgia), an attacking tackle Tyler Steen (Vanderbilt), reverse angle Eli Ricks (LSU) and run again Jahmyr Gibbs (Georgian Technology).
All of these men chose Alabama for a number of specific reasons, but other reasons were fairly obvious, such as the ability to compete for national titles and enter the league. NFL A bill with a high option number — and the additional amount that comes with it. On the other hand, a place like TCU cannot compete in that area. TCU can only hope to create scraps that Alabama, USC or even the State of Michigan didn’t want – until now.
Horned Frogs is by far the best example of using the transfer portal to build a team competing for national titles.
No team in the transfer era has made double-digit transfers, combined them with a head coach and freshman staff, and then went straight to the national championship game. In fact, TCU’s Sonny Dykes is trying to become only the fourth coach in history to win a national title in his first year at a show — and the first since Larry Coker to do so. that with Hurricane Miami 21 years ago.
Dykes won this opportunity by building on the foundation left by his predecessor, Gary Patterson, who was brilliant and steadfast in taking undervalued high school players and developing them into greats. top NFL talent. Dykes and his staff took it, then hit the portal to get what they needed.
Shadrach Bank played wide receiver in high school, and his game was favored over Amari Rodgers. But Banks plays the support person at TCU because that’s what Patterson thinks he’ll do best. Patterson has done this once before with Ty Summerswho has committed to play quarterback at Rice in 2013 before giving up his commitment to TCU and becoming a full-back and full-back.
With the benefit of Patterson’s assessment, Dykes and the assistants who also earned a transfer – 13 in fact – chose TCU because they were not given the opportunity to immediately play elsewhere or make an impact on their team. them the way each of them envisioned. With players like Johnny Hodges choose to transfer to TCU from Navy and solidifying a plan that defensive coordinator Joe Gillespie proved can develop NFL talent in the first round at Tulsa, TCU just wanted to give itself a chance.
And that’s all – a chance. The Horned Frogs were the first team to indicate that they were picked to place seventh out of 10 in the Big 12, and they have benefited from being looked down upon and underrated from Week 1 on. In that respect, they were the complete opposite of their opponents on Monday night.
Georgia was picked by most people to play in this game almost immediately after winning the national championship in 2021, despite having lost a lot of experience and product to graduation and the NFL. That’s because Kirby Smart has influenced the hiring and development philosophy of his mentor, Nick Saban. They choose them, they place them and they grow them.
Can Max Duggan annoy Bulldogs?
Smart, in just five years, made Georgia the new benchmark for hiring, and then distributed that talent to both sides. Fifteen five-star players and 78 blue-chip rookies – five- and four-star players – mark UGA’s list of 85 scholarships.
TCU boasts just 17 blue chips and one five-star player, placing it 32nd in the 247 Sports Talent Composite behind shows like Georgian Technology and Missouri.
Many programs require reloading instead of rebuilding. UGA went even further, imbuing Bulldog football culture along the way. When the portal attracted participants and NIL became the currency to execute the contracts, UGA sold the youth the culture, convincing them to bet on the process with the idea that it will pay off in the next few years. It has proven to be a winning strategy.
However, not every program is qualified to build that way, and not every program has the financial means to sustain an effort to attract the best players in the country year after year. . So UGA will probably be here, in this national title conversation, longer than TCU.
But more talk of off-season boost will be marked by wealthy sponsors approaching their respective coaches at caravan stops and asking why they can’t be TCUs. next. Those coaches will have no choice but to say it’s possible — and go for it.
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