Three-peat for Georgia football? How others did it with pressure on and expectations high

Kirby Smart ended his remarks at Georgia football’s latest national championship celebration by quoting from legendary UCLA basketball coach John Wooden.

“Winning takes talent, but to repeat it takes character,” he said.

Smart and his top-ranked Bulldogs embark on a three-peat quest this season to go where no college football team has gone since Franklin D. Roosevelt was in the White House.

Georgia can become the first team in the Associated Press poll era to win three straight national championships.

Minnesota did it from 1934-36 under coach Bernie Bierman, the first two before the poll began.

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An exuberant Smart flashed one finger, then two and then three at Georgia fans after the 65-7 rout of TCU to win the national title, teasing what his team will shoot for this season.

The Bulldogs can join rare company if they are celebrating again on Jan. 8 in n NRG Stadium in Houston.

“It’s really hard,” said Larry Farmer, who won three straight college basketball championships under Wooden at UCLA from 1971-73 as a forward. “Everybody’s going to give you their best shot. You find that out after you’ve won one and the next year you come back and now it’s like can you repeat? You’re ranked No. 1 in the beginning of the season and in our case, you pull it off again. … I’m sure the Georgia game is going to be highlighted on everybody’s schedule this year. The key thing is for Georgia to understand that anything less than their A game in practice during their preparation is only going to create a situation where they might be vulnerable to get upset.”

Michael Jordan and the Bulls won three straight NBA titles from 1991-93 and did it again from 1996-98. Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal and the Lakers followed with their own from 2000-02.

The New York Yankees are the last MLB team to win three straight World Series from 1998-2000. The New Islanders won four straight Stanley Cups from 1980-83.

Now Georgia will take its shot.

Eleven teams have had a chance at three-peating in the modern era, most recently USC (2003-04) and Alabama (2011-12) with Smart as defensive coordinator.

“I feel like just getting the national championship is the best feeling whether it’s a one-peat, two-peat, three-peat,” wide receiver Ladd McConkey said. “Just winning I feel trumps it all.”

At UCLA, 'That was the culture we bought into'

UCLA won seven straight national championships under Wooden from 1967-73. Farmer played in the last three of that run. His final season was the hardest, he said.

“There was a little bit more pressure than I might have felt wanting to go out a winner,” Farmer said. “It was fun to play on the road. Every arena that we went in, half the crowd came to see us because they knew we were really good and the other half came praying and hoping for the upset.”

The Bruins went 89-1 during his three seasons.

He said Wooden kept the team at an “even keel,” because he didn’t change his approach at practice for the biggest games.

“He didn’t add to the pressure,” Farmer said.

Players saw reminders of the expectation, Farmer said, in photos of the national championship teams in Wooden’s office and a trophy case in the student union filled with title trophies.

“That was the culture that I think we all bought into,” Farmer said.

Farmer, head coach at UCLA from 1981-84 and later at Weber State and Loyola (Ill.), is now creating his own culture as girls basketball coach at Woodlands Academy in Lake Forest, Ill.

He’s using, “Woodenisms,” like “Be on time when time’s involved,” and “It’s amazing how much can be accomplished when no one is concerned over who gets the credit."

Kellie Harper won three straight NCAA women’s basketball championships as a point guard at Tennessee from 1996-1998, beating Georgia 83-65 in the title game that first year.

Harper, known then as Kellie Jolly, was part of a team that went 39-0 in 1998 playing for coach Pat Summitt.

“That third one for me and my teammates that were the same year, there was just this expectation and a little bit of an air about us that was just different,” said Harper, now Tennessee’s head coach. “There’s a confidence that you know what you have to do and you know what it looks like and you’re just going to go do it. The expectations did not for me in that moment feel heavy. They reassured us. We knew what it was.”

UConn won three national championships in a row in from 2002-04 and then four straight from 2013-16.

“I do think it’s harder now because of social media and the constant noise and chatter that athletes have,” Harper said.

Oklahoma softball thrived under pressure: 'The season was definitely wearing'

Oklahoma softball put the focus on “our circle,” to complete the most recent three-peat in June by winning the Women’s College World Series for the third straight year.

“I’m sure Georgia feels this better than we do, but expectations are always a challenge,” Sooners coach Patty Gasso said. “Not wanting to disappoint and wanting to be at your best. I think for us we found a way to not get caught up in all that. If you think about all that, it just wears on you. The season was definitely wearing. What was interesting too, is people want a new winner. It felt like we had people really rooting against us just because they wanted to see an underdog.”

Oklahoma went 59-3 in 2022 and topped that going 61-1 in 2023.

Unlike with Georgia football, Gasso said there wasn’t much talk about three-peating.

“Maybe they didn’t think we could,” she said. “I don’t know.”

Oklahoma became just the second softball team to win three straight national titles, joining UCLA in 1988-90.

“This group I’ve had for the last three years, they embrace the idea that they’re feeling anxious and understand it and the more they embrace it and the more they understand it, the more they can deal with it,” she said. “They’re very passionate and they excelled at a level because they knew that they were that good and they have pride in the idea of not getting beat.”

Gasso said parity in the sport makes it harder nowadays to three-peat.

“It’s hard to be living in that world for such a long period of time, especially in this day and age with so many different moving parts with the transfer portal and NIL and all of that,” she said.

Keeping a team hungry after one and then two national championships isn’t easy.

“It’s almost to these athletes expected,” she said. “That’s how they feel in their circle. It’s not about what their parents are feeling or anything like that. It’s what they feel.”

She said players love being able to be the first to do something. Winning four in a row would do that for Oklahoma.

“If we win the national championship next year, we can say no one’s ever done this,” she said. “That really excites this team.”

Smart studied the success of the All Blacks New Zealand rugby team this season because of their sustained winning, but said he hasn’t looked into particular teams that have three-peated to gain insight from their journeys.

“Each and every year is independent from the previous, and there's nothing about the other two that's going to help us or hurt us in this season,” he said.

Smart insists the big prize at the end — a third straight championship — isn’t the focus entering September.

“I just don't think you can make it about that because the minute you do that, you open yourself to distractions, added pressure,” he said. “What if it doesn't happen? What are you playing for? … We've got a lot of work to be done before we start talking about that.”

This article originally appeared on Athens Banner-Herald: What Georgia football can learn from those that completed a three-peat