Georgia and Kirby Smart are claiming themselves as the new kings of college football

ATLANTA — Nick Saban retired in the offseason. You may have heard about it. His departure, along with Jim Harbaugh’s flight to the NFL, leaves college football with just three active head coaches who have won national championships. Two of them – the only two to win more than one title – faced off here on Saturday.

The result underlined who is the new king of sports. It’s two-time champion Kirby Smart and it’s not close. The Georgia Bulldogs coach won his 40th straight regular season game, defeating the Clemson Tigers, 34–3, at Mercedes-Benz Stadium. And his counterpart, two-time champion Dabo Swinney, looks better than ever.

The latest iteration of the Georgia beast looks a lot like its predecessors. The Bulldogs have guys all over the field, an endless supply of dominators and players waiting for a chance to show what they can do. Nine Dogs caught passes from quarterback Carson Beck against Clemson and 22 others made tackles.

Trevor Etienne, who came from the Florida Gatos, did not play after a DUI in the offseason. Freshman Nate Frazier racked up 83 yards on 11 carries in his first college football game. Linebacker Jalon Walker, who ranked 11th on the team in tackles last season, was unstoppable for a stretch of the second half, racking up 1 ½ tackles for loss and 1 ½ sacks. Beck was a known commodity, but he showed a full arsenal of talent in making a variety of throws and some timely runs.

The Bulldogs struck. They covered. They executed. They dominated.

The contrast between a very current Kirby and an outdated Dabo is shocking. Swinney has played Smart twice and has yet to score a touchdown. A guy who stood tall with Saban for many years is lying at Smart’s feet. It was Swinney’s biggest loss since 2013, before he elevated Clemson to elite status.

Swinney took zero trades this offseason, continuing his noble but anachronistic approach to building his team through high school recruiting and internal player development. It has also now lost three of its last four season openers and 11 of its last 41 games after going 79–7 over the last six seasons. She moves away from him.

There was little to no room to explain this beat, so Swinney didn’t even bother. “Tyler from Spartanburg” may be front-running Swinney’s next radio show, ready to disappear again.

“You get beat like that, it’s on the head coach,” he said. “That’s up to me. … When you lose like that, (critics) have every right to say what they want to say.”

Recognizing that Georgia’s defense is a monster, Clemson still needs to be able to do better than that offensively. The Tigers generated 19 more yards a game and averaged just 3.6 yards per play.

The Tigers have become a place where hotshots struggle on that side of the ball, with ongoing offseason talk about improvements not really happening.

Offensive lineman Garrett Riley, brother of USC Trojans head coach Lincoln, was fired from TCU at $1.75 million a year after the Horned Frogs played in the College Football Playoff in 2022. Riley’s latest transgression averaged 38.8 points and 455 yards per game; last season at Clemson, Riley’s unit put up 29.8 points and 402.7 yards. Now, this season’s team has reached 188 yards and three scores, the lowest total ever for Clemson under Riley.

Cade Klubnik was a five-star quarterback recruit, as was DJ Uiagalelei before him. Klubnik was a walk-on first-year starter in 2023, posting a 126.35 passer efficiency rating that ranked 10th in the Atlantic Coast Conference. His ERA against Georgia on Saturday: 96.30. But this offensive horror show was a team effort: Klubnik’s receivers didn’t help him early with some dropped passes and there were some crucial penalties.

Swinney stood up for Klubnik, saying he thought the quarterback played well. And, characteristically, the coach expressed his confidence in the season ahead.

“I feel great about our team,” Swinney said. “A loss is a loss; I hate to lose. So it hurts. It will leave a mark. This will be one I won’t forget.

“They didn’t hand out a national championship trophy tonight. We didn’t lose the ACC tonight.”

Indeed, ACC is a bit of an early mess. Defending champion Florida State was defeated by Georgia Tech last week. Hot pick Virginia Tech was upset by perennial Southeastern Conference mainstay Vanderbilt on Saturday. And the once mighty Tigers were embarrassed in Atlanta.

Smart was asked after the game about the transfer portal regarding Clemson. Smart hasn’t been a huge portal enthusiast himself, choosing to simply fill in a few gaps as they arise. But he recognizes the need.

“If you give me every kid that I sign, they stay in my program for four years and they can’t leave, I’d take that any day of the week,” he said. “But if we lose children, we have to replace them. … It is a forced situation. You have to use it.”

Swinney has been successful in his own right, in part because of his stubborn belief in himself and the way he builds a program. He was successful enough with this approach that it became difficult to get him to accept the need to make radical changes. Starting 4-4 ​​last season led to a “Tyler from Spartanburg” moment and more criticism than Swinney has endured in more than a decade — but then Clemson rallied and won its final five games, and Swinney would could claim that his approach is still viable.

The same could happen here. Losing to Georgia is no great shame – although the margin was brutal. Early season losses are less costly than ever with the extended playoffs looming. A whole season ahead.

But the days when Clemson was able to hang with the best programs in the country are fading like a Trevor Lawrence jersey left out in the sun. This was a benchmark game for the most accomplished active coaches in college football, and it was an absolute beating of Dabo Swinney by Kirby Smart.