A sense of disbelieving euphoria still lingers among the Georgia faithful after the big win last Saturday down on the Plains. Amazing, isn’t it, how one game can totally change the look of a football season. But really, this Georgia season has been a close-run thing all along. The team is 7-4 at the moment…but consider how easily it could have swung three games either direction.

Suppose Vanderbilt misses that game-winning field goal with two seconds remaining; that Kentucky’s final game-winning drive is stopped short of the needed touchdown; and that Georgia either a) succeeds in taking the air out of the ball in the second half against Tennessee, and holds on for the win instead of coughing up an incredible 27 points in the fourth quarter, or b) Georgia turns the ball over less than five times against Florida, taking away the touchdown that the Bulldogs handed them at the start of the second half, and adding at least another field goal to their tally. Four plays, going the other way at the exact right time, could well have been enough to boost Georgia to 10-1, preserve their national ranking, and send them back to the SEC Championship game—leaving them one big win in Atlanta away from a BCS bowl, and even inclusion at the fringes of the national championship discussion.

Now suppose, on the other hand, that Martrez Milner drops the touchdown pass with 46 seconds remaining that allowed Georgia to edge past Colorado; that instead of stripping the ball, the Bulldog defense yields those last 20-odd yards to the Bizarro Bulldogs, letting them complete their game-winning drive just like Vanderbilt and Kentucky; and that either: a) Georgia fails to come from behind to beat Ole Miss in Oxford, or b) Brandon Cox decides not to have the worst game of his career last Saturday, and the Bulldogs get shellacked by Auburn as everyone had expected. That would leave Georiga at 4-7, with an inconceivable 2-6 record in SEC play, in a year when Georgia had the weakest possible lineup against the Western division (with LSU, Arkansas, and Alabama off the schedule); and instead of being talked about at the edges of the national championship picture, Georgia would be showing up on the list of doubtful-yet-still-possible coaching changes.

What a weird year. What a string of strange performances. What a puzzling set of outcomes. And how very different the picture looks today than it did a week ago.

But if they didn’t intend for strange things to happen, they would have never made the ball such a funny shape in the first place, would they?