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00:00Kicking at 4 p.m. Eastern Time in New Orleans, it is the Sugar Bowl between the 2 seed Georgia and the 7 seed Notre Dame.
00:08Mark Zitto is here to handicap the game and break it down.
00:12Again, it does bear repeating a reminder of why this game was postponed until this afternoon at 4 p.m. Eastern Time
00:19and not its originally slated start at 8.45 p.m. Eastern Time last night.
00:24The terror attack in New Orleans in the early morning hours of New Year's Day.
00:29We send our love and our thoughts to a community that is willing and everybody affected.
00:34We hope this monumental college football game can provide just a sense of relief for the community in the Big Easy.
00:42Georgia and Notre Dame in the Sugar Bowl, Mark Zitto, for a spot in the Orange Bowl exactly one week from tonight to take on Penn State.
00:51Let's start with the number because it has been changing throughout the week.
00:56Even yesterday, it was a pick them for most of New Year's Day with Notre Dame starting to flirt with being booked as the favored side.
01:05And that's what we see here, even if as slight as just three cents on the money line and a point and a half in the spread.
01:14Zitto, where do you start your breakdown for the Sugar Bowl between the Dogs and the Fighting Irish?
01:20Well, let's start from the postponement angle.
01:22And if there is any edge to either team when it comes to the game being delayed because of what happened down in New Orleans.
01:29My first reaction is to go, well, the edge goes to the team with the better coach.
01:33You give a better coach more time to prepare, more time to go over film, more time to look at things.
01:38They're going to figure out a way to take advantage of it.
01:40The better coach in this game by a wide margin is Kirby Smart.
01:44Give the edge to the dogs here. And that's where I go with the dogs on the money line in this one.
01:48Look, a lot of people want to sit here and try to create this narrative that Notre Dame dominated Indiana in their game.
01:55No, they really didn't. I know it felt that way.
01:58And I know the scoreboard looked that way. But when you start to part and parcel the box score and start to look a little bit deeper,
02:04outside of a 98-yard touchdown run by Love in that game, the Irish averaged 2.8 yards per carry.
02:11They averaged 5.6 yards per play in the game overall, just 4.3 without that one run from Love.
02:18So Georgia's defense is still very good.
02:21If you look at Georgia and what that defense did to Texas in the SEC championship game,
02:28I know this is not the Georgia defense that we're used to seeing from the national championship teams, but it's still very good.
02:34It's still an SEC caliber defense, which is better than anything that Notre Dame is putting out there.
02:38And so I look at this and I go, their defense is good enough to contain Texas in that offense.
02:43They should have no problem with Riley Leonard at all.
02:45I don't think Riley Leonard is good enough to throw them to a win here.
02:48These are the spots where Kirby Smart and Georgia, when they're undervalued,
02:52when they're treated like an underdog in a spot where they're not as good as their opponent, this is where he comes up big.
02:58And this is where he dominates and reminds everybody that, hey, that G on the side of the helmet means something.
03:02I'm not a Georgia fan by any stretch, even though I live in Atlanta. You guys know that.
03:06But Georgia is a better team here, and I don't know that Notre Dame has done anything to show me,
03:12given what their regular season has been and their win over Indiana,
03:16that they are even on the same plane as a Georgia team that's much better.