It didn't feel like much at the time, but college football history was made when Micah Morris went off the board to the Philadelphia Eagles with the 207th pick in the NFL Draft on Saturday.
An offensive lineman who saw action in two games that season while redshirting, Morris became the 45th player drafted off of Georgia's 2021 national title team. And with the 44 selection points that came with being the 207th pick in the draft, Kirby Smart's 2021 team nudged past 2017 Alabama for the most talented team of the 21st century.
For those unfamiliar, Selection Points was the formula I invented back in 2021 to better quantify NFL draft production at the college level. The first pick in the draft is worth 250 points, the second is worth 249, and so on, thereby awarding both quantity and quality. After all, the first pick and the 257th pick are not the same, and therefore should not be counted the same.
2021 Georgia moved in position to catch 2017 Alabama last spring after eight players went off the board, and the club added two more selections with Morris in the sixth round and quarterback Carson Beck in the third. The 45 total draft picks were already a record, starting with a record-tying 15 picks in the spring following the championship, and then 10 apiece in 2023 and '24, and then 10 more over the past two drafts. With five more picks (Christen Miller, Oscar Delp and Daylen Everette -- all true freshmen at the time), Georgia's 2022 championship squad jumped from 14th to seventh place.
While their top spot was taken, the 2017 Alabama team still holds a special place in college football history. The 40 total draft picks are still the second most all-time, but it's where those picks were made that's most impressive: 15 in the first round, and an astonishing 26 in the top 100, including all 10 members of the 2020 draft class. If you were a scholarship player on Alabama's 2017 team, there was a roughly 1 in 3 chance you would not only hear your name called in the NFL draft, but that you would be taken within the first three rounds.
Elsewhere, Ohio State once again won the draft with another strong showing, and so its 2024 team moved past eight prior champions -- including 2023 Michigan -- into 16th place all-time. An impressive 23 Buckeyes have already been drafted off their 2024 roster... which puts them barely halfway to catching 2021 Georgia.
To no one's surprise, Indiana profiles as a "working class" title team. Despite producing the No. 1 pick, the Hoosiers finished in a modest 11th-place this past weekend and profile much closer to 2010 Auburn and 2006 Florida than any of the Alabama, Georgia or Ohio State champs.
Moving forward though, it will be interesting to see how the transfer portal and NIL affect these numbers. Unlimited free agency and a non-existent salary cap make it impossible to hoard depth in the way Smart and Nick Saban did back in the day, they also make it easier to acquire high-level talent, both in the form of blue-chip recruits and one-year rentals looking to make some money while boosting their draft stock, a la Will Howard and Quinshon Judkins at Ohio State. Here's betting that 10 years from now, most of the future champions look more like 2024 Ohio State than 2025 Indiana.
But it'll still be extremely difficult to match the legacy of 2021 Georgia or 2017 Alabama.
National Champions Since 2001
1. 2021 Georgia -- 6,643 selection points (45 total draft picks)
2. 2017 Alabama -- 6,614 Selection Points (40 total draft picks)
3. 2001 Miami -- 5,848 (38)
4. 2015 Alabama -- 5,668 (34)
5. 2014 Ohio State -- 5,483 (31)
6. 2004 USC -- 5,407 (32)
7. 2022 Georgia -- 5,197 (34)
8. 2003 USC -- 5,098 (31)
9. 2002 Ohio State -- 4,948 (33)
10. 2020 Alabama -- 4,821 (28)
11. 2012 Alabama -- 4,782 (30)
12. 2011 Alabama -- 4,517 (30)
13. 2009 Alabama -- 4,513 (26)
14. 2019 LSU -- 4,490 (32)
15. 2005 Texas -- 4,020 (25)
16. 2024 Ohio State -- 3,916 (23)
17. 2013 Florida State -- 3,597 (22)
18. 2003 LSU -- 3,463 (23)
19. 2023 Michigan -- 3,389 (25)
20. 2018 Clemson -- 3,262 (20)
21. 2016 Clemson -- 3,136 (21)
22. 2008 Florida -- 3,019 (19)
23. 2007 LSU -- 3,017 (24)
24. 2006 Florida -- 2,745 (20)
25. 2010 Auburn -- 1,045 (7)
26. 2025 Indiana -- 895 (7)