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Georgia scored its first championship win since 1980.

On Monday night, the number 3 college football team, the Georgia Bulldogs, took on the number 1 team, the Alabama Crimson Tide, at the College Football Playoff National Championship in Indianapolis. This was a revenge match of sorts for the Bulldogs, as the Tide had previously shut them out at the SEC Championship Game last month, and what a revenge it was: the Bulldogs took the Tide to the cleaners, clinching the game 33-18.

Not only is this a fantastic victory for the Bulldogs in general, but it’s also a monumental one. The Bulldogs haven’t taken home a Division I title since 1980. That means this is their first championship victory in a good 41 years.

“A lot of guys made plays and that’s what this team has been, a collective group of people stepping up when they’re needed,” Georgia coach Kirby Smart said after the game.

“We really focused on playing man-to-man and doing it better than they did,” he added.

Indeed they did; the Tide had the lead for most of the game, well into the fourth quarter, but once their score hit 18, it seems they ran out of steam and weren’t able to score again.

“I just feel really poorly that we didn’t finish the game better than we did in the fourth quarter, because we played a heck of a game against a heck of a team for the first three quarters of the game,” Alabama coach Nick Saban said.

National Champion Georgia Bulldogs has a nice ring to it, doesn't it #GoDawgs pic.twitter.com/5GWiIcnF4a

— Georgia Bulldogs (@UGAAthletics) January 11, 2022

At the last minute of the game, the Tide needed a touchdown and a two-point conversion to get things into overtime, but the throw from their quarterback, Bryce Young, ended up being intercepted by the Bulldogs, who put the final nail in the coffin.

“We had a lot of opportunities, moved the ball relatively well,” Young said. “We did some stuff well. We didn’t execute. And at the end of the day that’s on me. For us not finishing drives like we want to, it’s just not executing.”