Texas is drawing plenty of preseason buzz again, and this time even a Georgia insider is buying in.
Brooks Austin posted on July 10, 2026, that Texas enters the season with a roster built to chase a title. In his words: "Texas has a flawless roster. They’ve been given every resource required to demand title expectations.
Every hole was filled by a 7 figure transfer.
They even paid Will Muschamp to allow Sark to refocus himself on calling offensive plays. https://t.co/tYB8gGFAPh
- Brooks Austin (@BrooksAustinBA) July 10, 2026"
That kind of confidence is easy to find around the Longhorns right now, even though Georgia has spent the last two seasons shutting down the same conversation. Texas was picked to win the SEC in each of the past two years, and Georgia answered by beating the Longhorns three times on the way to back-to-back SEC championships. Now the Bulldogs are chasing a third straight conference crown, a feat only two other schools have managed since the SEC Championship game began.
Still, Texas is once again the favorite in Vegas to win the league, and Austin is not the only one leaning that way. The bigger question is why the Longhorns are getting so much trust after what happened a year ago.
Texas did not reach the College Football Playoff last season, and it did not even get to the SEC Championship game. Yet the preseason optimism keeps rolling in.
Georgia, meanwhile, has the track record. Kirby Smart’s team has proven it can finish the job in the SEC, while Texas is still trying to turn all that offseason hype into actual results.
The Longhorns also face one of the toughest schedules in the country, while ESPN recently said Georgia has the easiest slate in the SEC. That makes the Longhorns’ status as conference favorite look even more questionable.
CBS Sports offered a different kind of path for Georgia, one that would still involve Texas getting the upper hand in the SEC title game. Their prediction has Georgia going 11-1, losing to Texas in the championship, and landing as the No. 5 seed in the College Football Playoff. That would mean no first-round bye, but CBS Sports suggested that might not be such a bad thing.
The reason is simple enough: Georgia has gone 0-2 in the quarterfinals over the last two years after earning a first-round bye, and teams with byes have gone 1-7 in the quarterfinals over that same span. Under that setup, the Bulldogs would host the 12-seed in the opening round and could then draw the 4-seed in the quarterfinals.
Georgia still wants the SEC title, and nothing in the program’s recent run suggests otherwise. But if the Bulldogs fall short and Texas is the team standing in the way, it may not be the disaster some would assume.
In Other News...
Former Georgia Flip Jared Curtis May Already Regret Leaving Athens
Jared Curtis path from Athens to Nashville already made him one of the more intriguing names in the Georgia recruiting story, especially after he committed to the Bulldogs twice before flipping late in the process. The former five-star quarterback chose Vanderbilt with the idea that he could step in and compete for the starting job right away, a gamble that always carried some risk for a freshman trying to force his way onto the field.
Now the tension is whether that move actually gives him what he wanted. Curtis is in the mix for Vanderbilts quarterback battle, but the early read on the situation suggests the door to immediate playing time may not swing open the way he hoped, which is exactly the kind of outcome that can make a bold decision look a lot different in hindsight. For Georgia fans, it adds another layer of interest to a familiar recruiting twist, even if the larger question around Curtis is still very much unresolved. [Read more 🡒]
Kirby Smart May One Day Face A Georgia Decision Fans Can't Ignore
A new recruiting subplot is already taking shape around Kirby Smarts family, even if it is still years from becoming a real decision. Andrew Smart, who is just beginning his freshman year of high school and is part of the 2030 recruiting class, has shown enough promise as a young quarterback in a video to get people talking about what his future could look like if that arm keeps developing.
Georgia has not offered Andrew a scholarship yet, but Georgia Tech already has, which only adds to the intrigue around a name Bulldogs fans will be hearing more often. If he continues on a quarterback path, the bigger question may not be whether he gets recruited, but whether Kirby Smart eventually has to decide how far he is willing to go in chasing his own son. [Read more 🡒]
Georgia Just Missed On A 4-Star Target Fans Expected To Land
Georgias 2027 defensive line board took an unexpected turn when Kadin Fife, a four-star prospect who had already drawn plenty of attention after stops at Georgia and Ole Miss, made a decision few around the recruiting trail saw coming. The buzz had been building around his recruitment for weeks, especially after a recent 247Sports prediction from a Georgia insider pointed in the Bulldogs direction.
Instead, the reaction in Athens was one of surprise, because Louisville was not viewed as a serious front-runner in the chase. Georgia already has four defensive linemen committed in the class, but Fife would have been the highest-ranked addition at the position, which is why this miss lands as more than just another recruiting swing and miss for a program still trying to stack elite talent up front. [Read more 🡒]