What’s at stake for Georgia, Texas in the SEC championship? More than you might think

For all the chaos roiling the rest of college football right now, all the questions of who will make the College Football Playoff and who will rage from the sidelines, the SEC championship seems fairly stable. After the crab pot that was the SEC’s regular season, it’s a little surprising to see the top two teams at the beginning of the season end up as the top two at the end.

When Georgia and Texas kick off on Saturday at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta (where the Longhorns are a 3-point favorite), there won’t be the drama of, say, the Mountain West, ACC or Big 12 championships, where the winner will join the CFP field and the loser will be out. (Potentially out, in the ACC’s case.)

Both Georgia and Texas are almost certainly in the field already, so there’s not quite the do-or-die incentive looming over this game. (We say “almost certainly” because you can’t ever fully know the CFP’s thinking … more on that in a bit.) But there’s still plenty to play for, starting with the first-round bye.

The top four conference championship winners get a pass directly into the quarterfinals, and unlike the NFL, this isn’t just an extra week off. Thanks to the holidays, the winner of Saturday’s SEC championship won’t play again until the Sugar Bowl on New Year’s Day. That’s three-and-a-half weeks of rest and preparation, invaluable at this time of year.

Plus, let’s not forget bragging rights; there’s significant cachet in being able to declare yourself an SEC champion.

“An SEC title is a significant marker to your season,” Georgia head coach Kirby Smart said earlier this week. “Also it gets you a bye and it gets you an opportunity to rest and recover while others play formidable opponents, tough opponents. It removes you from that. You’re playing for an opportunity to rest, possibly.”

The loser of the game would be in line for a first-round home game the weekend of Dec. 20-21. Texas, with one loss, would have a better claim to hosting a first-round game in Austin than a three-loss Georgia would have of hosting one in Athens. Would the committee penalize Georgia for playing an extra game while Ohio State, Tennessee and Indiana sat home and watched? Who knows?

One more reason for wanting that first-round bye: It’s still very much up in the air how much that first-round on-campus game will be worth. Home-field advantage is no guarantee; Georgia whomped Texas in Austin, and then the Dawgs very nearly lost to Georgia Tech in Athens.

Everyone’s assumed that those first-round games will be raucous, student-and-alumni-filled festivals of familiar fight songs in familiar surroundings. But a college football Saturday in September is a way different beast than a college football Friday night in late December. What will the weather be? How many out-of-town alumni and students will make the trip back to campus three or four days before Christmas? Will students be able to stay in their dorms? How will all this work, exactly?

It’s all uncharted territory here, but it all goes to the fact that hosting a home game, while far preferable to going on the road in December, isn’t a guaranteed advantage. All the more reason to want that first-round bye. Can’t lose if you’re not playing.

The last time these two schools met, back in October, No. 5 Georgia knocked off No. 1 Texas in a 30-15 game that wasn’t that close. Since then, Georgia has lost to Ole Miss and survived in eight overtime against Georgia Tech, while Texas has won five straight, including tougher-than-expected scraps against Vanderbilt and Arkansas. It’s safe to say that neither of these teams is quite as good as predicted earlier in the season. But you don’t reach the SEC championship by being lucky. Given how the last few weeks have unfolded for each school, there’s no outcome of this game that would be a tremendous shock.

If, as expected, Dawgs and Longhorns fight into the fourth quarter, the seedings will take care of themselves. The winner will almost surely be seeded second, the loser fifth (depending on the Big Ten outcome and various other factors). But what happens if there’s a blowout? How far would either team fall?

Three-loss Alabama sits out there in the far reaches of the rankings as a stopgap; neither a two-loss Texas nor a three-loss Georgia that reached the SEC title game should fall behind the Tide. But a ninth seed or below isn’t out of the question. That would be a hard fall, from potential bye to road game in Knoxville or Columbus. But it’s possible. Safest way to avoid any CFP debate is to remove any reason for debate.

“I hope especially in the Southeastern Conference’s case nobody gets punished for playing this game,” Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian said. “It’s a little bit of a war of attrition in our conference. I always kind of chuckle at people. ‘Oh, yeah, we beat an SEC team this year.’ But you didn’t play it eight straight weeks. You didn’t have to go play in some of these environments that people have to play in week in, week out.”

It’s not often that the SEC plays opening act to the ACC, but that’s definitely the case on conference championship Saturday. Georgia vs. Texas will be a bare-knuckle war, well worth watching as we wait to see what unfolds in the ACC championship … and then the CFP debates will truly begin.