A chance at the national championship is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for many programs and coaches.  When it presents itself, there is no choice but to go for it.  Now that the politicking has begun for BCS positioning, Mark Richt has jumped in with both feet tonight with an aggressiveness that befits the team we’ve seen this season.  No matter the outcome of the number-crunching, there is no question that Richt is fighting for this chance for his team.

In a Saturday night media teleconference, Richt touched on several of the points he made on ESPN earlier in the evening.

“I think we are one of the two best teams in the country right now. If the rule stated we had to win a conference championship, then that’s what we ought to do. But that’s not what the rules state.”

He also spoke directly to the SEC champions:

“I think if we could have gotten to play in the championship we certainly could have won that game, yes,” Richt said. “I think we could beat LSU.”

Richt continued to make the case that pollsters should show some consistency from last week:

“We were ranked 4th in the BCS this week for a reason. (Voters) believed we belonged to be there,” he said. “Everybody knew last week that we weren’t going to win the conference championship but they voted us ahead of other people anyway. They voted us for a reason and I don’t see why that would change.”

“Georgia one of the two best teams in the nation today? We were voted No. 4 last week in this doggone thing. Two teams ahead of us lost, so why would that change?”

Mark Bradley also goes to bat for Georgia in Sunday’s AJC, making this key point:

The greater injustice would be for LSU to lose its final regular-season game and then be allowed, on the strength of a seven-point victory in the conference title game, to pass a team that has won its past six. The greater injustice would be for the Tigers to get a third shot to prove it’s No. 1 when Georgia hasn’t yet had one.

LSU has been to the top of the mountain twice and couldn’t hold its footing.  It’s time to make way for another team.