Georgia
Notre Dame vs. Georgia opening odds: Date, time, point spread and total for Sugar Bowl, CFP quarterfinal
The first victory of the new 12-team College Football Playoff goes to Notre Dame, as Marcus Freeman and the Irish blasted Indiana at home in South Bend to advance on to the quarterfinal. Their reward? A date with No. 2 seed Georgia, which earned a first-round bye after outlasting Texas in a classic SEC Championship Game earlier this month.
After a dominant performance against the Hoosiers, Notre Dame won’t be scared of anybody. The Irish defensive front manhandled the nation’s top scoring offense, while Jeremiyah Love and Co. outrushed Indiana 193-63. Notre Dame was the physically superior team from the opening snap, but now the competition ratchets up considerably against one of the most talented teams in the country. Which of these two teams is installed as the early favorite? The early spread and total have been released, so let’s break it all down.
Time: Jan. 1, 8:45 p.m. ET
Channel: ESPN
Location: Caesars Superdome, New Orleans, La.
According to FanDuel, Notre Dame opened up as 1.5-point favorites. However, the spread quickly flipped, and UGA became a 1.5-point favorite. There was also movement with the total, which opened at 46.5 before dropping to 45.5.
The big unknown looming over this game is Georgia’s QB situation, as redshirt sophomore Gunner Stockton is set to start for the Dawgs with Carson Beck unavailable due to an arm injury suffered in the conference title game against Texas. (Beck is likely out for the rest of Georgia’s season, with Smart saying earlier this week that his quarterback is still weighing surgical options.)
Of course, Stockton still did just enough to lead Georgia to a dramatic OT win over Texas in Atlanta, completing 12 of 16 passes for 71 yards (albeit with one brutal interception). And when this Georgia team is rolling, they’re commanding on both lines of scrimmage, capable of bullying just about anyone in the country. Even with Beck out, you can understand why Vegas would consider the Dawgs a slight favorite, especially considering that we still haven’t seen Notre Dame QB Riley Leonard succeed when pressed against a great defense.
Still, an essential pick ’em here feels about right, considering how stout both of these defenses are and how battled tested these teams have proven themselves to be.
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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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