Josh Pate Stands Firm on SEC Championship Prediction Ahead of 2026 Season

One SEC pick survived a full month of preseason revisions, and it's rooted in a rematch the analyst has lost this bet on before.

College football analyst Josh Pate | Josh Pate's College Football Show/YouTube

Nothing about the 2026 college football season has stayed still for very long. Coaches have been fired, quarterbacks have transferred, and win totals have been rewritten more than once before a single snap.

Josh Pate has revised his own bracket right along with everyone else, scrapping his national title pick and reshuffling his Big 12 winner inside of a month. Through it all, he has refused to change his mind about one specific outcome in Atlanta.

Josh Pate keeps Georgia over Texas

On The Locker Room, the podcast Pate co-hosts with Will Compton and Taylor Lewan, the trio ran through every Power Four conference before settling on the SEC. Pate's call: Texas gets back to the SEC Championship Game, and Georgia beats the Longhorns there for a second straight year.

It is the same result the two programs produced in the 2024 title game, when Georgia won in overtime. Georgia's most recent conference title came the following year, a win over Alabama in the 2025 championship game.

Texas Longhorns quarterback Arch Manning (16) runs with the ball against the Michigan Wolverines. | IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect

Pate does not have a spotless history of picking this particular matchup. He said on the show that he has taken Texas over Georgia a couple of times before and lost both bets, stopping short of a third attempt this year.

He views Georgia as a bad matchup for Texas specifically, regardless of how the Longhorns perform against the rest of their schedule.

What Texas, Georgia bring to a SEC Championship matchup

Texas arrives with arguably the most complete roster in the country. Arch Manning is entering his fourth year in the program and his second full season as the starter, and he closed out 2025 by posting the sixth-best PFF grade in the nation among quarterbacks from Week 9 on. Steve Sarkisian added the No. 3 transfer class in the country this offseason, giving Texas top-10 rankings at every position group, including a top-five offense and defense.

Georgia's strength runs through its defense, where 21 players with meaningful experience are back, led up front by Xzavier McLeod and Elijah Griffin and at linebacker by Raylen Wilson, Chris Cole and Justin Williams. The passing game is more of a question mark. Only London Humphreys and Georgia Tech transfer Isiah Canion return with at least 200 receiving yards from a season ago, after six of Georgia's top seven pass catchers left the program. Gunner Stockton is back for his second year as the full-time starter.

Texas Longhorns head coach Steve Sarkisian and Georgia Bulldogs head coach Kirby Smart interact after a game at Sanford Stadium. | IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect

None of that roster context changes how Pate feels about Kirby Smart's track record in this specific game. Smart has taken Georgia to the SEC Championship Game in nine of his 11 seasons, missing only in 2016 and 2020, and no coach currently in the SEC has beaten him there. Nick Saban was responsible for three of Smart's four losses in that game before retiring, and LSU delivered the other one in 2019.

Everything Pate has touched in his projections this offseason has moved except this one, and he won't budge before the season starts.