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See my response to stone below. And I'll just add one additional response here.
When you say, "I mean does anyone seriously think Texas or Michigan can compete at the elite level with their current level of recruiting AND coaching? Heck NO. No way. It's a pipe dream for (2) programs that USED to dominate." Isn't that just another way of saying they're drastically underachieving NOW? To reiterate a point I made yesterday(?), I'm not trying to let Georgia off the hook for its own failures. What sticks in my craw is this notion that we are to be set aside in a class all our own as underachievers, when there are multiple programs out there that COULD be elite with proper management but are doing worse than we are, and have been for some time.
Understand what you are getting at...I think.
Given their average recruiting and average coaching, both TX and Michigan are probably achieving about as good as they can do and one could also argue they are underachieving as well. However, the spotlight isn't on them. It's on us precisely because we have the best players and coaches in the game. We aren't achieving what we should be achieving - especially in the weak SEC East. TX and Michigan are average teams doing less than stellar things with what they've got. Until they ramp up their coaching, recruiting, execution, etc. not many people EXPECT them to do much more. However, they expect more from the Dawgs.
Devil's advocate - How can Ole Miss (2 times), Texas A&M, Auburn (3 times), and LSU ALL beat a Nick Saban Bama team yet the Dawgs have lost 3 times when in each of those games the mighty Georgia Bulldogs were leading at halftime???
How do you explain that without coming up with a major underachievement? Are we not in a 'league of our own' when it comes to underachieving? Sure, other teams have lost to Nick Saban but not as badly as we have when SO MUCH was on the line in every single one of those games.
You see what a disappointment the Dawgs are now to so many fans out there?
I've never disputed that the situation is disappointing. Of course it is. Again, it's the comparison to other programs that I would argue are at least in the same boat as us, if not worse, that I think is inaccurate and unfair. So, no. I don't think it's reasonable to place us in our own category as though we are doing soooo much worse than every other "blue blood" out there. Again, you pretty much gloss over those programs' shortcomings as though there's some rule disallowing them from doing better. Those failures that set the bar so low, at programs like those, ARE the underachievement.
And to answer your question about the results against Alabama, take the combined records of those other programs against Saban since he got there, and it's not exactly stellar. I mean, yeah, you play enough teams enough times and every now and then an upset will occur. As disappointing as the outcomes have been, I really don't see how you can argue that losing 3 closely contested games against the top program in the country can only be called a massive underachievement.
Well, I guess we can agree to disagree on a couple of things. Good discussion.
l will say this as my final words on this subject for now...with the talent and coaching we have this year, if the Dawgs don't make it to and also win the SEC Championship game (and subsequently make the playoffs) then I would call that a major underachievement for 2021. Hopefully, we'll be overachievers!
I said before and I'll keep saying it -- if we had simply won the NC game in 2018, a game that we had won until a bonehead mistake by supposedly seasoned defensive backs, NONE of this conversation would be taking place. That one game would have forever changed the trajectory of UGA football (for the better). We would be the new Alabama and Clemson and would habitually be ranked #1 or #2 (as they typically are) every year. 5-star recruits would basically recruit us. We wouldn't get them all, but we would get just about every one that we truly wanted. That one game was that important and I'll bet that after CKS retires and writes his book, he'll say just that. Go Dawgs!