Unmotivated Georgia Looked Like Big Losers

Multiple things can be true at the same time. Georgia wasn’t motivated against Texas after missing out on the College Football Playoff. Its defensive unit was depleted almost beyond recognition as player after player opted to sit out. The Bulldogs may have truly believed they had an excuse to go out there and lose the Sugar Bowl. All of that is accurate.

It’s also true that all Georgia did after not getting an invite to the final four is embarrass itself. Multiple players took great joy in seeing Notre Dame and Oklahoma get pushed around in the semifinals. They let it be known — with emojis — that they still believed they should have been in the playoff.

We shouldn’t judge 18-22 year-olds too harshly for voicing frustration over missing out on the opportunity of a lifetime. But these tweets look bad. The excuses look bad. You don’t get to simply erase a dreadful and humbling loss by saying you didn’t care about the result. That tacit admission, in and of itself, is a problem.

And allow me to don my best old man pants here. It’s antithetical to sports. A team is supposed to care about the result. A team is supposed to fight through adversity to do the bare minimum: try to win the game. That’s an important step to skip. That’s telling on oneself.

Complaining is easy. Competing is hard. If what Georgia did is not the definition of the folly of entitlement, I don’t know what is.

I know, I know. We shouldn’t take last night’s result and use it as an argument of why the Bulldogs weren’t playoff-caliber. That’s not what I’m suggesting. The committee got it right with Notre Dame and Oklahoma, and it wasn’t really as contentious of an argument as the talking heads on ESPN would have you believe.

We can, however, use it as an example of what not to do, if saving face is important. Talking the talk means eventually walking the walk, or at least not stumbling in such magnificent fashion.

Maybe it’s true that Georgia wasn’t invested in winning. Even then, where’s the fun in going out and getting pushed around for 60 minutes? When did that become an acceptable outcome for competitive athletes?

Perhaps the lesson is that if winning isn’t a priority, it’s easy to come away looking like a loser. A loud loser.