Georgia football sunk teeth into disrespect card in 2022. Now it can thank College GameDay

Kirby Smart was given a gift on the last Saturday before Georgia football kicks off its season.

The Bulldogs are the reigning two-time national champions and an overwhelming pick in both the Associated Press and USA TODAY Sports AFCA Coaches Poll coaches polls as the No. 1 ranked team.

Yet the ESPN CollegeGameday trio of Desmond Howard, Kirk Herbstreit and Pat McAfee all picked Alabama to win the SEC championship.

How the Georgia football coach will take that red meat and feed it to a Bulldog team that now has reason to be hungrier is uncertain, but he’s used motivational ploys in the past.

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Smart on Dec. 31 before the Peach Bowl national semifinal game with Ohio State told his unbeaten team in the pregame locker room: "We've been disrespected this entire year since the last time you were here."

We know that because the video of it was part of ESPN’s “Them Dawgs” documentary that aired in July.

Before the national championship game in Irvine, Calif. — where Georgia whacked TCU 65-7 — wide receiver Marcus Rosemy-Jacksaint told me: “There was a lot of talk of how we weren’t going to be the same caliber team that we were last year. We’re going to be a 6-6 team.”

Inside linebacker Jamon Dumas-Johnson went even lower in the win output saying people felt Georgia might win five or six games.

Never mind that Georgia was considered a playoff team before the season by most and spent nine straight weeks as the No. 1 team before it returned to the playoff.

“If I ever thought we were going 7-5, they need to check me into a psychiatric ward,” Smart said last week. “I never thought that, I never said that, I never expressed that. That’s never been a thing.”

He added: “A lot of people doubted us throughout the season. You go back and watch some of the games before we played a team that was ranked higher than us. That may have been the case for one game, but not necessarily the whole season."

The only game Georgia played a higher ranked team was when Tennessee was No. 1 in the College Football Playoff rankings on Nov. 5. The Bulldogs shut down the Vols’ high-powered offense 27-13.

Smart did say at the national championship celebration in Sanford Stadium in January that “not one guy,” not even former Georgia All-American David Pollack and then ESPN analyst said the team would make the playoffs.

Pollack and Howard did not have Georgia in their final four, but Herbstreit and Lee Corso did.

Now Smart can roll the GameDay video clip from Saturday.

Howard said “people aren’t respecting Alabama right now. Everyone’s still excited about Georgia.”

“Saban’s back, though,” McAfee said. “Our old friend, our good friend still, David Pollack, at the national championship, right in front of (Nick) Saban’s face, saying, yeah, so Georgia’s your dad now. I think that is something that’s going to motivate an entire culture. I think Alabama’s going to be back.”

Added Herbstreit: “When you question him and you think Alabama’s done, he just finds a way to come back.”

Host Rece Davis picked Georgia to win the SEC and Herbstreit had Georgia losing in the national semifinals and McAfee had it falling to Alabama in the national title game.

Georgia players on Monday didn’t make a big deal of the slight that certainly got Bulldog fans attention.

“That won’t necessarily get us juiced up,” nickel back Tykee Smith said. “We’re going to come in every day and do what we do as far as getting ourselves better.”

Center Sedrick Van Pran-Granger said he had not seen the GameDay picks.

“At the end of the day, they have their opinions and we respect it," he said. "All we can do is just work and try to have the best results for us.”

Smart has talked about stomping out complacency for a team that includes players already who have kissed the national championship trophy after the last two seasons.

“We tell them the biggest threat and opponent we have the entire year is Georgia,” Smart said.

With, it appears, a little help from the World Wide Leader.

This article originally appeared on Athens Banner-Herald: Kirby Smart gets red meat to feed to Georgia football team from GameDay