Paul Finebaum Names SEC Powerhouse That He Isn’t Convinced Will Be ‘Great’ originally appeared on Athlon Sports.
The 2025 college football season is less than a month from getting underway, as Week 0 will kick off on August 23. That will feature five games.
The rest of the country will kick off the following week. As the season draws near, more projections are coming in from many teams, including the Georgia Bulldogs.
The Bulldogs have been at the top of their game since 2021. They won back-to-back national championships in 2021 and 2022. In 2023, they went undefeated in the regular season, but a loss to the Alabama Crimson Tide in the SEC Championship Game ended their playoff hopes.
Last season, Georgia won the SEC Championship by defeating the Texas Longhorns in overtime with a score of 22-19. However, they later lost to the Notre Dame Fighting Irish, with a final score of 23-10. On “The Paul Finebaum Show,” the SEC Network analyst expressed doubts about the Bulldogs’ performance this season.
“I think Georgia will be good, I’m just not convinced they’ll be great,” Finebaum said. “I think they can get to the playoffs. I really don’t see all that much on the schedule… I think they can scrape together a 10-2 record and hopefully by then Gunner Stockton is in a position to make some noise in the playoffs.”
As the 2025 season approaches, ESPN’s Football Power Index (FPI) is optimistic about the Bulldogs, ranking them as the No. 2 team in the nation, just behind the Texas Longhorns.
The FPI is a metric designed to assess team strength and predict future performance for the rest of the season. The FPI shows how many points a team is above or below the average.
It predicts that Georgia will finish the season with a record of 10-2. Additionally, it gives them a 78.6% chance of making the College Football Playoff and a 17.9% chance of winning the national championship, which are the second-best odds after Texas.
Finebaum’s lack of faith in Georgia becoming great is likely due to his opinion of Stockton. He has criticized Stockton this offseason, expressing doubts about Stockton’s ability to lead Georgia to a national championship.
Stockton has had limited playing time in his career, accumulating a total of 588 passing yards, along with three touchdowns and two interceptions. He is stepping in to replace Carson Beck, who had an impressive record of 7,426 yards, 52 touchdowns, and 18 interceptions during his two seasons as the starter. Beck announced that he would be transferring to the Miami Hurricanes after last season.
Stockton and the Bulldogs will start their quest for a national championship, aiming to prove doubters like Finebaum wrong as they kick off the season at 3:30 p.m. ET on August 30 against the Marshall Thundering Herd.
Related: Paul Finebaum Names College Football Powerhouse He Doesn’t Feel Great About
This story was originally reported by Athlon Sports on Jul 31, 2025, where it first appeared.