Briggs: Go ahead, call me a Big Ten apologist, but Georgia football is a shameless joke

There have been sexier scandals, from point shaving at Toledo to sign stealing at Michigan, with a side of Tat-Gate at Ohio State in between.

But as far as college football infamy goes, they all pale in comparison to the current pall of shame hanging over the sport.

That’s the Georgia football program.

If the stench of its give-zero-bleeps culture has not received a lot of national attention, that’s only because of a reality as old as time: Winning is the ultimate deodorizer.

The Bulldogs represent the good, the bad, and the Uga of college athletics, a powerhouse as dominant on the field as they are shameless off of it.

And they are putting to the strongest test the broad — and uncomfortable — questions that confront all fan bases: What are you willing to tolerate in exchange for Saturday glory?

Has college football become so commercialized that truly nothing else matters anymore?

Look around, and it’s hard not to wonder.

A few weeks ago, Oklahoma State coach Mike Gundy said he is not suspending Ollie Gordon II after the superstar running back’s recent DUI because players are now “employees, whether you like it or not.” (Besides, the coach did the math and Gordon’s alleged BAC of 0.10 would have translated to “two or three beers, or four.” “I’ve probably done that 1,000 times in my life,” Gundy said.)

And then there’s Georgia, where tradition never graduates — just like its players — and coach Kirby Smart is so fed up by his team’s breakaway run of recklessness that he has tried damn near … nothing.

I wrote about Georgia’s defiant lack of accountability last year in the wake of tragedy, when recruiting staffer Chandler LeCroy and offensive lineman Devin Willock died in a street-racing accident, and, unfathomably, it appears nothing has changed.

Since that terrible night in January, 2023, the Bulldogs have reportedly had at least 29 arrests or citations for speeding, reckless driving, or racing.

Other than the Bulldogs regularly putting themselves — and, worse, their community — in danger and having the worst graduation rate in the FBS, they are the model program.

Is winning that important?

This came to mind again after Georgia’s latest in a line of off-season incidents — the arrest last week of receiver Rara Thomas on charges of cruelty to children and battery.

Thomas was suspended indefinitely, but the real question is why he wasn’t already. This was at least his SIXTH run-in with local police since transferring to Georgia from Mississippi State in 2023. Thomas was also arrested on family violence charges last year — the charges were dropped after he completed a pre-trial diversion program — and had reportedly been cited by Athens-Clarke County police for speeding or running a red light four times this offseason alone, driving as fast as 33 mph over the speed limit.

Also reported since the spring, star running back Trevor Etienne was charged with DUI after police said he was driving erratically at speeds above 90 mph (the charge was dropped as part of a plea deal); wide receiver Anthony Evans III was stopped for going 104 mph in a 70 zone; and linebacker Quintavius Johnson was warned for driving 94 in a 65 (Go Dawgs) but cited only for not wearing a seat belt.

While I have no dog in this fight, I know what Georgia fans will say, reflexively firing back that I’m an apologist for Ohio State and Michigan, every program has problems, and … blah, blah, blah.

Fine. I’m not here to cast stones.

But even by the most cynical standard, Georgia is in a league of its own in making a mockery of college football’s tether to higher education.

And, really, if this is the program the rest of the nation is chasing, have we all finally and completely lost the plot?

I think about how Toledo coach Jason Candle defines culture, distilling it to what you celebrate and what you tolerate.

Georgia celebrates winning and appears to tolerate everything else.

In the classroom, the football program’s graduation success rate is 41 percent, per the NCAA’s latest academic report. Put another way, 41 percent of the Bulldogs players who entered college in 2016 earned an undergraduate degree within six years.

Given that schools aren’t docked for players who transfer or leave for the NFL early in good academic standing, that’s as brazen as it is pathetic. (By comparison, Alabama, Michigan, and Ohio State all had a GSR above 87 percent. Toledo’s was 94 percent.)

As far as the program’s spree of recklessness, if Smart truly cared about the welfare and best interests of his players and the campus community, he would drop the hammer and suspend the next player charged with anything more than a garden-variety traffic or speeding violation for a year.

Instead, he continues to talk about the measures already taken — vague suspensions, players getting fined by the NIL collective, etc. — and the program just keeps acting as if it’s as invincible off the field as it is on.

The drip, drip, drip of bad headlines might as well be the tick, tick, tick.

Sadly, in Georgia, the just-win-baby Bulldogs are the time bomb no one has the guts to defuse.