Georgia
Coaches Poll Top 25 rankings for Week 13: Georgia football moves ahead of Ole Miss after beating Tennessee
ATHENS — Rankings are a sore subject for head coach Kirby Smart at the moment.
His Georgia team now sits at No. 8 in the Coaches Poll Top 25 rankings for Week 13. The Bulldogs moved up thanks to a 31-17 win over Tennesssee, who dropped from No. 4 to No. 11 in the rankings.
But after Saturday’s win, Smart voiced his displeasure with the College Football Playoff committee and how it ranks teams. Georgia fell from No. 3 to No. 12 after its previous loss to Ole Miss.
“I don’t know what they’re looking for. I really don’t,” Smart said. “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. And you can’t see that stuff on TV. So I don’t know what they look for, but that’s for somebody else to decide. I’m worried about our team.”
The win for Georgia completes its portion of SEC play, as Georgia went 6-2. The Bulldogs have a win over No. 3 Texas, with the Longhorns being the highest-ranked team in the SEC.
But Georgia also has losses to No. 7 Alabama and No. 9 Ole Miss. Oregon maintained its No. 1 ranking, with Ohio State landing at No. 2. Penn State is No. 4 while Indiana is No. 5.
With the SEC schedule complete, Smart knows the most difficult portion of Georgia’s schedule is complete.
“I mean, everybody thinks we should win every game. I’m very proud of our team,” Smart said. “If you told me that this group would be this resilient, I would probably say I don’t doubt it, because they’re great kids. And they played the toughest schedule in our league, and we still got two games left of tough teams. Georgia Tech’s been a great team, and UMass has played three or four SEC teams already.”
Georgia hosts UMass this coming Saturday. The game is set for a 12:45 p.m. ET start, with SEC Network broadcasting the game.
As for the updated College Football Playoff rankings, those will debut on Tuesday.
You can see the full Coaches Poll Top 25 rankings for Week 13 below.
Coaches Poll Top 25 rankings for Week 13
- Oregon
- Ohio State
- Texas
- Penn State
- Indiana
- Notre Dame
- Alabama
- Georgia
- Ole Miss
- Miami
- Tennessee
- SMU
- Boise State
- Texas A&M
- BYU
- Clemson
- Army
- Colorado
- South Carolina
- Tulane
- Iowa State
- Arizona State
- UNLV
- Memphis
- Kansas State
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Kirk Fordice-like Rick Jackson is sounding a whole lot like Daniel Kirkwood Fordice as he tries to be elected Georgia’s next governor.
Fordice came out of nowhere — actually, Vicksburg is somewhere but you know what I mean — in 1991 to become a two-term Mississippi governor.
He had money but nothing like Jackson, a billionaire businessman who’s also trying to emerge from nowhere politically to win Georgia’s top office.
“The establishment hated Trump, because they couldn’t control him. They are going to hate me,” Jackson says in an ad for Georgia’s Republican Primary on May 19, sounding like one of my favorite Mississippi governors — Fordice, because of his unpredictable personality (he could vilify or charm you, all in one sentence), not his politics. He died in 2004 of cancer.
I stood by a cafe entrance one morning, waiting to cover a Fordice speech. When he appeared, I stuck out my hand to shake his. “I’m not shaking your damn hand. You’re part of the problem down there (referring to the newspaper),” he told me, smiling and moving on.
Jackson rose to become one of economic giant-Georgia’s wealthiest people. He came from Atlanta’s rough midtown area, ending up in the foster care system. He left college due to poor financial circumstances.
The 71-year-old Jackson wormed his way into the dynamic city’s business scene in the late 1970s, mostly of the healthcare variety with mixed success before starting a workforce staffing and services company and later an antibiotics manufacturing plant. He turned those businesses into billion-dollar enterprises.
“It’s God’s money,” he said in rural Blakely, and he’s been charitable with it.
Jackson doesn’t try to hide his vast wealth. His family lives in a 48,000-square-foot mansion at Cumming, a place of nearly 100,000 people near Atlanta in Forsyth County, which once promoted its almost all-white population as a virtue.
Atlanta Journal-Constitution columnist Bill Torpy recently wrote that Jackson will spend a ton of his own money in seeking another mansion, the one occupied by Georgia’s governor. Torpy noted that present Lt. Gov. Burt Jones was once heavily favored to win the primary race, but he’s fallen behind Jackson’s bold money bid.
“The one-time front-runner in the Republican primary (Jones) has been relegated to No. 2, the result of a $100 million Mack truck running him over.
Rick Jackson, a billionaire healthcare tycoon, a man with a sly smile and reptilian gaze, is the guy driving that truck,” Torpy wrote.
The GOP field includes Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger, who spurned Trump’s demand to find 11,780 votes that would’ve allowed him to win Georgia in 2020.
Fordice was effective with some bombastic rhetoric during his run for governor, but I don’t remember it reaching the histrionic level employed by Jackson. In a major ad blitz, often referencing (Georgia college student) Laken Riley’s murderer, Jackson promises that unauthorized immigrants committing violent crimes will be “deported or departed … any questions?”
In another ad, Jackson growled, “Like President Trump, I don’t owe anybody anything, and like you, I’m sick of career politicians.”
Fordice spent only $1 million to get himself elected Mississippi’s governor. He somewhat sneaked up on the establishment, riding no escalator to the first floor of his Vicksburg concrete river mats-contracting office to declare his intentions. Who could ever forget his announcement seeking the governorship that ran on page 5 of the Clarion Ledger?
Recent polling ahead of Georgia’s May primaries for governor shows the eventual Republican nominee faces a strong Democrat in the November general election, most likely former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms. That’ll require another whole pot of money.
— Mac Gordon, a native of McComb, is a retired Mississippi newspaperman. He can be reached at macmarygordon@gmail.com.
Gulfstream recently announced a $5 million investment in Georgia education, welcoming students and leaders to its Savannah headquarters.
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