Given how the two programs have been discussed this offseason, it was surprising to some to see Georgia as the preseason pick to win the SEC.

Yes, the Bulldogs have won back-to-back SEC championships and played in Atlanta in eight of the previous nine installments of the game. But so much of the chatter this offseason around Georgia has centered around how the program has taken a small yet noticeable step back from the top perch in college football.

“When it comes playoff time, if you got to go score 30 or 40, we’re seeing a lot of quarterbacks out there that are like first-round, you know type guys, and I think there’s a pretty good chance the teams that make these deep playoff runs are going to have those dudes who are really really high upside quarterbacks,” Bud Elliott of the Cover 3 Podcast said. “I don’t think Georgia has that. I think they got a really nice one, you know. So maybe they can force everybody into a dog fight, no pun intended, and win it that way. We’ve seen them do it before.”

The Bulldogs have gone one-and-done in each of their previous two seasons in the College Football Playoff. Texas, conversely, went to the semifinals two seasons ago and sports a loaded roster this coming season.

Texas quarterback Arch Manning was voted as the Second Team All-SEC quarterback, while Georgia’s Gunner Stockton landed on the Third Team.

Yet at SEC Media Days, it was Georgia picked to finish ahead of the vaunted Longhorns by an 88-57 margin in terms of first-place votes.

And for all the talk of Texas and its superior roster, Georgia finished with just as many players on the preseason All-SEC teams.

“They’re still the king, right,” Peter Burns of the SEC Network told DawgNation. “As much Texas wants to be there but Texas hasn’t been tough enough to go out there and punch Georgia in the mouth. They get bloodied every time they end up doing it.”

Burns is referencing the fact that Georgia is 3-0 against the Longhorns since they joined the league back in 2024.

Georgia has won all of those contests in different venues. It has had water bottles thrown at it and still won by double digits. It lost its starting quarterback at halftime of the SEC championship game and still won.

When Texas came into Athens last season, it still clung to hopes of making the College Football Playoff. But a brilliant onside kick and a masterful five-touchdown performance by Gunner Stockton powered Georgia to a 35-10 victory.

Texas has quickly become a foil to Georgia since joining the league. With the way Steve Sarkisian has elected to run his program, it has been a stark counter to that of Georgia, even frustrating some red and black supporters.

Yet when the two have played on Saturdays, its clear Georgia has been the better program.

“We’ve played Georgia three times,” Sarkisian said of Georgia at SEC Media Days. “They’ve beaten us. All the credit in the world to Kirby, their team. They’re tough. They’re good. If we want to be a champion, I’m guessing we’ll probably have to beat the champion to make that happen.”

While speaking at SEC media days, Smart was asked about the pros and cons of Texas and Oklahoma in the SEC. Both teams have made the College Football Playoff since coming over from the Big 12.

Yet Smart made it clear that the addition of those two programs has only been additive for the league. Even if winning the SEC championship has become a tougher proposition.

“I think at night the year we went over there, it was like we got back at 3:30 a.m. or something,” Smart said. “We played a night game on the road in a different time zone. That’s tough, right? But outside of that, I don’t know that there’s cons.”

Georgia isn’t scheduled to face Texas this season, as the Bulldogs instead draw the other side of the Red Rival Rivalry in Oklahoma.

Whereas the Bulldogs have had a more difficult league slate in each of the prior two seasons, that changes for 2026. The Longhorns have games against LSU, Tennessee and Ole Miss, in addition to games against Oklahoma, Ohio State and Texas A&M.

Texas actually faces more College Football Playoff participants from last season than Georgia does. Perhaps that played a part in Georgia having a 31-vote edge over the Longhorns when it comes to winning the conference.

Though as Burns points out, it’s impossible to ignore the on-field results between these two programs.

And while they’re not scheduled to face each other this season, no one would be shocked if the two meet up in Atlanta for the SEC championship game or in the College Football Playoff.

“Everybody’s going to have an opinion, so you can’t control opinions out here,” Georgia linebacker Raylen Wilson said. “I mean, we pretty much understand that, so we really don’t harp on, ‘Oh, they said this about us.’ We really just focus on being better.”