No. 12 Georgia states case to CFP committee, bests No. 7 Vols - ESPN

ATHENS, Ga. — Georgia coach Kirby Smart wouldn't say if being ranked 12th by the College Football Playoff selection committee motivated the Bulldogs to prove a point in Saturday night's game against No. 7 Tennessee.

Coming off last week's ugly 28-10 loss at Ole Miss, their second defeat of the season, the Bulldogs would be the first team left out of the playoff if the 12-team bracket was based on the current rankings. No. 13 Boise State would get an automatic bid as the fifth-highest ranked conference champion and would jump them.

That's probably not the case anymore, however, after Georgia manhandled Tennessee 31-17 at Sanford Stadium.

«I don't know what they're looking for. I really don't,» Smart said of the CFP selection committee. «I wish they could really define the criteria. I wish they could do the eyeball test where they come down here and look at the people we're playing against and look at them. You can't see that stuff on TV, and so I don't know what they look for. But that's for somebody else to decide. I'm worried about our team.»

For the first time in a while, Georgia looked pretty good on both sides of the ball against Tennessee. The Bulldogs fell behind 10-0 in the first quarter, but came back to tie the score at 17 at the half. Tennessee had only eight first downs and didn't score in the final 30 minutes. It was the ninth time a Josh Heupel-coached team has scored fewer than 20 points — four of them came against Georgia.

The Bulldogs won their 29th consecutive game at home and defeated Tennessee for the eighth straight time, all by double digits.

«Our kids showed resilience,» Smart said. «I'm proud of them. Look, it was a week ago, a couple of hours, that we were dead and gone. People had written us off.