The Georgia Bulldogs won the SEC Championship in dramatic fashion against the Texas Longhorns. After the final College Football Playoff Rankings reveal, it was pointed out that the Bulldogs secured themselves the No. 2 seed in the 12-team bracket and received a first-round bye in the process.
However, the Bulldogs will now travel to the Allstate Sugar Bowl in the quarters instead of the nearby Peach Bowl — also a quarterfinal host site — for their matchup with the winner of Indiana vs. Notre Dame.
Why Georgia Won’t Play In the Peach Bowl
When the first-round matchups were drawn up, it was shown that the Bulldogs would play the winner of the 7-vs-10 matchup between the Fighting Irish and Hoosiers. However, their ‘bowl game’ that they’ll play their quarterfinal matchup in is set to be in New Orleans in the Sugar Bowl.
This was, of course, no fault of the Bulldogs, who many thought would play their quarterfinal matchup in the Peach Bowl, in what would basically be a home game.
The reasoning for this is two-fold: The SEC Champion, regardless of who that is, will be assigned to the Sugar Bowl, the Big Ten maintains its tradition with the Rose Bowl, and the two remaining quarterfinal games will be given away to the remaining top-ranked seeds based on locality.
This means Georgia — by winning against Texas — guaranteed themselves the Sugar Bowl as their host site in the quarterfinals.
Oregon was awarded the Rose Bowl while Boise State was given the Fiesta Bowl due to locality and Arizona State was sent to the Peach Bowl.
The 12-team bracket shook out in favor of multiple teams, but no matter what the committee did with their rankings, the Bulldogs were never going to get the Peach Bowl.
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