Kirby Smart on potential Georgia three-peat: ‘Comfortable does not win’

The Georgia Bulldogs are beginning to look like a college football dynasty after winning back-to-back championships with a 65-7 beatdown of the TCU Horned Frogs Monday night. 

The Bulldogs were dominant in 2022, becoming the first Georgia team to finish a season 15-0 and the first team to repeat since the 2011-12 Alabama Crimson Tide. 

As the Bulldogs enter the offseason, immortality is on the horizon. 

GEORGIA’S LADD MCCONKEY PRAISES STETSON BENNETT AFTER ANOTHER NATIONAL TITLE: ‘HE SHOWS UP IN THE BIG MOMENTS’

Can Georgia become a “three-peat” champion? 

“I really don’t want to think about three,” Georgia head coach Kirby Smart said Tuesday. “It’s human nature to relax. It’s human nature to take the easy route.” 

Smart praised the 2022 team for its resilience before warning his 2023 squad against relaxing following back-to-back championships. 

“Starting to think about the next one, I do think it’s going to be much tougher,” Smart continued. “And I do think we’re going to have to reinvent ourselves next year because you can’t just stay the same. Like these two guys up here [Javon Bullard and Brock Bowers], they’re coming back. And we have a lot of guys, in my opinion, that are going to come back, and it’s easy to get comfortable. And comfortable does not win.”

The last team to win three straight national championships was the Minnesota Golden Gophers from 1934-36. 

It was a vastly different time in college football with 1935 being the first year of the Associated Press era. 

In an era when players can transfer without sitting out a year and when name, image and likeness rules the day, a three-peat in the College Football Playoff era would be as impressive as anything college football has ever witnessed. 

Georgia will be entering the 2023 season with a new quarterback under center as Stetson Bennett, the two-time winner of the national championship offensive MVP, departs Athens. 

Redshirt junior Carson Beck is the favorite to take over for Bennett, according to CBS Sports. 

Brock Vandagriff, a five-star recruit coming out of high school, and Gunner Stockton will also be competing for the starting job.

Whoever winds up under center, history will be on his shoulders as the Bulldogs look to accomplish what has not been done in modern college football.