Braves and Bulldogs Changing the Championship Narrative in Georgia

With the Atlanta Braves winning the World Series and the Georgia Bulldogs the college football national championship is the narrative changing in Georgia? 

For years now there has been a cloud of negativity surrounding mainly the Atlanta Braves and Atlanta Falcons and how they choke on the big stage.

But that narrative also extended out to Athens, Ga. where the Bulldogs had been on the verge of breaking through several times under Kirby Smart in recent years but fell short, leading to many people thinking Georgia sports is somewhat cursed.

Both the Braves and the Bulldogs have taken steps to change that narrative with their recent champions, and they both exorcised some demons on their respective journeys.

For the Braves, it was only fitting that in order to reach the World Series they had to go through the Los Angeles Dodgers.

The team that had eliminated two of the last three years, and the team that came back from being down 3-1 in the 2020 NLCS to break the Braves hearts and continue that cursed stigma of Atlanta sports.

It took a unique group of characters with a fresh new attitude in order for the Braves to get that done, but once they got that monkey off their back you could feel the narrative start to shift.

For Georgia, it really couldn’t have been anyone other than Alabama for them to go through. A team they hadn’t been in forever, a team Kirby Smart had yet to beat, and the team that broke their hearts in the 2018 national championship game.

Had Georgia beaten Ohio State or Clemson in the title game it still would have felt great, but then there still would have been the questions about — can they do it against Bama.

The answer is yes, and now you can eliminate that stigma as well.

But will it continue for the Braves and Dogs?

Both of these teams are so similar with the Braves going through a rebuild and putting themselves in a window to win. You knew they would have at least a chance to win one over the next five years.

For Georgia, they’ve been so close and you just knew at some point they would breakthrough.

It’s obviously going to be a lot easier for Georgia to maintain success with all the limitations and unknowns of baseball, but it would not surprise me at all to see either team win another championship in this decade.

It kind of reminds me of when the Boston Red Sox broke the curse in 2004 with that unique cast of characters. Once that stigma of falling short was lifted, it allowed them to relax and play with confidence.

The Red Sox would win it again three years later, and then six years after that, and then five years after that.

For me, at least for the Braves and Dogs — the Hawks and Falcons have some work to do — the loser narrative is over. These teams know what it takes to get it done, they have that confidence, and the next time they’re in those spots they’ll know how to get it done.