Here’s my updated college football national champion prediction, and it starts with a confession. My preseason national champion crashed and burned. Oregon was a bad pick prior to the start of the season, I’ll admit it, and I’m reformed.

Now that we’re about midway through the college football season, it’s time to look at the playoff contenders again and land on a team I can actually trust. And to me, it’s an obvious pick, even after a bad loss.

Why Georgia and Kirby Smart is the best pick to win the National Championship

My logic is simple. When this many top teams aren’t great, I go to the coaching advantage. Who can exploit the many weaknesses we see across all these contenders? I landed on Kirby Smart and Georgia.

And you may say, Tegan, Georgia just lost to Auburn at home this past weekend. Yes, I’m siding with the same Georgia team that let Auburn walk into its building and win. I’m not ignoring that. The criticism is fair, and Bulldogs fans have every right to be annoyed by it.

But here’s how I see that loss. I don’t see a single Georgia fan panicking. This program has earned the benefit of the doubt, and one ugly Saturday doesn’t change what Smart has built. If the top of the sport is full of flawed teams, who else can you trust outside of Smart to exploit those flaws once you get to the College Football Playoff? I can’t come up with a better answer. That’s the point.

Who knows, maybe that home loss to Auburn is the kick in the rear Georgia needed to play its best football yet. I’ve seen this program respond to adversity before, and a wake-up call in the middle of the season is a lot better than one in December.

I may be wrong here. I was wrong about Oregon, after all. But in a season with no dominant team, I’m betting on the best coach in the sport to figure it out when it matters most. Georgia is my national champion, and if that pick blows up too, I’ll live with that.

The field doesn’t look as intimidating as it did just a few weeks ago

Let’s start with Ohio State. The Buckeyes are more than likely going to be without their starting quarterback, potentially for the entire season. Some reports say there isn’t much reason to be optimistic that Julian Sayin will be back at 100 percent at any point this year. That’s a massive blow for a team with a national championship standard. But, with Jeremiah Smith, we can’t ever count the Buckeyes out.

Then there’s Notre Dame. The Fighting Irish didn’t look fantastic against BYU. Maybe BYU is a national championship contender in its own right, but that performance didn’t exactly scream title team to me.

And that’s the whole story of this season. There is not a perfect team in college football right now. There’s so much parity in this sport that picking a champion based on who looks the cleanest on paper feels like a fool’s errand. Nobody looks clean.