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This is a rematch of the 1981 Sugar Bowl, which will be remembered in a video played during the game. But what’s more interesting is the video, which is running in the Superdome a few hours before the game, refers to the game giving Georgia “its first-ever national championship.”
That’s not according to Georgia, which claims the 1942 national championship. The NCAA recognizes Ohio State as that year’s champion because it was the AP poll winner. Georgia retroactively claimed the championship in the 1980s when Vince Dooley was visiting the College Football Hall of Fame and saw that several other publications at the time picked Georgia.
“The Georgia people evidently, the administration or whoever, must have just accepted the fact that Ohio State claimed it than it was theirs,” Dooley told The Athletic in 2020. “But I figured if they had six, and we had six, there was enough.”
Georgia went 11-1 that year while Ohio State went 9-1. The final AP poll came out before the bowls. Georgia won the Rose Bowl, beating UCLA, while Ohio State didn’t play in one. But for decades it was accepted that Ohio State was the national champion, so when Dooley and the Bulldogs beat Notre Dame here in 1981, they celebrated it as their first national title.
Then decided a few years later it was actually their second. Either way, a reminder that having a Playoff is at least a cleaner way of deciding things.
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