To nobody’s surprise — and appropriately enough for a game held in Atlanta — Georgia is well represented on the Super Bowl LIII active rosters of the Los Angeles Rams and New England Patriots. What is a bit head-turning is which school the Bulldogs share the honors with for the most players in the final NFL game of the year.
Rutgers.
Yes, that’s right, the Scarlet Knights are tied with UGA in having four players in the Super Bowl this year. The Patriots have three State University of New Jersey products (Devin McCourty, Jason McCourty and Duron Harmon) while the Rams have Sebastian Joseph-Day. The Bulldogs are evenly split and have some big names playing just down the road from Athens in Todd Gurley and Ramik Wilson for LA and Sony Michel plus David Andrews with New England.
Michel is a notable name in particular, not just because he’s a big part of the Pats offense but because he played in the College Football Playoff National Championship Game for Georgia in the same building one year ago.
Auburn, Cal, Florida, Iowa, Miami, Ohio State, Oregon, Oregon State, USC and Washington all had three players on the active roster. The SEC is on top as a conference (21) and edged out the Big Ten (20), Pac-12 (18), ACC (11) and Big 12 (7). There are 10 FCS and four Division II players in the big game too while the AAC led the Group of Five with six representatives.
One interesting quirk? While Alabama and Clemson have dominated college football in recent years, that success didn’t carry over into Super Bowl LIII. There are just two Crimson Tide players in the game (Mark Barron and Dont’a Hightower) and a single Tigers player (Dwayne Allen).
Both of those former Nick Saban players do have a chance to join a select group in winning both an FBS national title in college and a Super Bowl ring though (Hightower actually has two of each already). The others are Lamarcus Joyner (Florida State) and Andrew Whitworth (LSU) with the Rams along with some guy named Tom Brady (Michigan).
