It's a strange place to be, standing at the intersection of the biggest stories in your sport while sitting at home, but that's where the Auburn football program finds itself today.

Without beating Auburn in the Peach Bowl, Central Florida wouldn't be staging a parade to celebrate its self-proclaimed national championship and sparking a national debate about the closed shop that is the College Football Playoff.

Without losing to Auburn in the Iron Bowl, Alabama wouldn't have gotten an extra week to rest and reflect on who it is and who it isn't. The Crimson Tide might not have found the motivation it clearly needed after one of Nick Saban's worst Novembers as the recipient of the fourth and final playoff spot.

Without losing to Auburn at the start of Amen Corner, Georgia might have gotten too big for its silver britches to make that memorable comeback in the Rose Bowl semifinal against Oklahoma.

Some of it's fact and some of it's speculation, but it all makes sense. Without Auburn, Alabama and Georgia would've played a month ago in Mercedes-Benz Stadium in the SEC Championship Game, making their meeting in the same building Monday night more improbable than inevitable.

None of this is any consolation to the Tigers. They were 60 minutes from the playoff, and they're a mere 108 miles from the National Championship Game, but those distances might as well be light years.

They're sitting at home at the worst possible time, beginning a long process of figuring out how to finish a season the only way that seems to matter these days in the SEC.

As part of that reflection, Auburn doesn't like the insinuation that its regular-season victories over No. 1 Georgia and No. 1 Alabama meant nothing. The way people in the program see it, they went 2-2 in the season's biggest games.

They won the first two but lost the last two.

Meanwhile, Georgia is 2-1 in its biggest games with rousing wins over Auburn and Oklahoma after its lopsided loss on the Plains. Alabama is 1-1 in its biggest games with a dominant win over Clemson after its dispiriting defeat in Jordan-Hare.

Depending on Monday's outcome, Alabama will finish 2-1 or 1-2 in the games that define a season. Georgia will end 3-1 or 2-2.

Auburn's attitude suggests the gap isn't that large, though the task in closing it may be. This is the only team in America that now has to close each regular season against a Georgia program that's arrived and, after a G5 or FCS breather, an Alabama program that's not going away.

What-ifs can be positive or negative. What if Alabama hadn't wounded Kerryon Johnson in the Iron Bowl, rendering him unable to carry the load as SEC MVP in the SEC Championship Game? Even with a hobbled Auburn star, Georgia dominated the final 15 minutes that day, not the entire four quarters.

What if Jake Fromm hadn't led Georgia on that final 14-play, 74-yard touchdown drive at Auburn to lessen the ultimate damage to 40-17? Fromm himself mentioned that drive's importance Saturday. Without it, would he have been able to push the Bulldogs into overtime in the Rose Bowl with that late TD march?

Gus Malzahn is scheduled to be in Atlanta on Monday on ESPN's College GameDay as the coach of the team that handed both Alabama and Georgia their only defeats. It's a natural and uncomfortable place to be. He was closer than he's been in four years to getting his team here. The teams that are here wouldn't be here without him and his team.

That reality should drive him and Auburn all the way back to Atlanta for next season's opening game.