- Kirby Smart would rather smash a nonconference opponent than face another SEC team next season.
- As CFP auto bids are awarded by conference championship games, shouldn’t teams play more than half the conference?
- Kirby Smart ‘very concerned’ about Georgia playing a ninth SEC game in 2026, instead of facing Louisville.
Kirby Smart picked a peculiar time to climb upon the soap box. And soap box is a polite way of saying, Smart started whining about Georgia’s 2026 schedule, a year in advance. Seriously.
Say this for Smart: He’s consistent. A year ago, he roasted commissioner Greg Sankey about Georgia’s 2024 schedule, right after accepting the SEC trophy.
This time, the Bulldogs had just finished off a beatdown of Alabama in the SEC Championship, when a reporter asked Smart about young players stepping up in the victory.
A few seconds into his answer, Smart took a left turn. He wanted to discuss something else. By discuss, I mean lament.
Smart, like some of his SEC coaching peers, aren’t crazy about the conference adding a ninth league game next season.
Swapping in another SEC opponent in place of a nonconference game stands to make the schedule tougher. Coaches work relentlessly to minimize risk. Playing another SEC game heightens risk. Plus, it complicates Smart’s quest to win every game.
“I mean, the coaches in our league are concerned about” adding a ninth SEC game, Smart said. “Very concerned about it. I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t speak my piece and say it’s concerning.”
As Smart put it, half of the SEC’s teams lose a conference game. Clearly, he’d prefer to dunk on overmatched nonconference foes.
Well, boo-hoo.
We’re supposed to pity a coach who must play Arkansas in place of Louisville?
More conference games help improve CFP auto bid process
Consider the upside of a ninth SEC game. If the CFP is going to keep guaranteeing bids for the SEC’s champion and its runner-up, wouldn’t it be helpful to know the conference’s two best teams are actually playing for the conference championship?
Officially, CFP rules don’t guarantee a bid for the SEC runner-up, but, let’s be real, that’s happening. The committee proved in recent weeks it has no intention of omitting the SEC’s runner-up, just as it never rejected the SEC’s champion from the four-team bracket.
The committee bent over backward to preserve a spot for Alabama. It went to such farcical lengths as elevating the Tide in the penultimate rankings after an ugly win against Auburn. That provided a rankings cushion, in case Alabama lost the SEC Championship game and Brigham Young won the Big 12 championship.
The SEC deserves multiple bids in a bracket of this size. No argument there. No argument with Alabama qualifying, either. It built a case, courtesy of the Tide’s 10 wins against a stout schedule. But, before the committee hands out a wink-wink auto bid to the loser of the SEC Championship, let’s at least employ additional measures to help ensure the conference’s two best teams are actually playing in Atlanta.
Alabama reached the conference championship by beating seven teams in a 16-team conference.
When I played first base for a three-time E League champion slow-pitch softball team, we faced everybody in the league en route to the titles. No automatic bid to a slow-pitch playoff awaited. Just a free T-shirt.
The E League respected what college football does not: To call yourselves champs (or runners-up), you need to face everyone in the league. (Also, $1 off draft beers if you reused the same plastic cup week after week.)
Conferences have become so bloated teams can’t possibly face everyone in their own league, but at least by adding a ninth SEC game, every team will play more than half the teams in the conference.
Same goes for the ACC, which will add a ninth conference game next season. In the meantime, unranked Duke won the ACC with an 8-5 record.
To capture the crown, the Blue Devils beat seven members of the 17-team league, showing how absurd conference championships have become.
This has made me evolve my thinking on the playoff. I’m now for a playoff with no automatic bids. I’d do away with the Power Four conference championship games and add a 13th regular-season game for everyone.
But, hey, the conference title games make a lot of money, so they endure.
In response to the addition of a ninth SEC game, Georgia countered by canceling future nonconference games against Louisville and NC State. So be it.
If conferences insist on retaining championship games and the CFP attaches automatic bids to them (and, in the SEC’s case, attaches a wink-wink bid to the runner-up), then conferences should maximize efforts to produce the top two teams in the finals. Playing a ninth conference game aids that.
Additional meaningful games will help clear up CFP selections
Also, consider how increasing the number of meaningful games helps the CFP selection committee.
The committee deserves criticism for its dubious machinations, but let’s acknowledge the difficulty the committee faces while sifting through teams with identical records and similar metrics that didn’t play each other, especially when those teams hail from the same conference.
Oklahoma and Vanderbilt, a pair of 10-win teams, didn’t play each other. So, the committee was left to guess that the Sooners deserve a bid and not the Commodores, by virtue of OU’s slightly better strength of schedule and superior record against common opponents.
There’s parity like never before in the SEC. The more games that pit similar-caliber teams against one another, the easier it becomes for the committee to separate the wheat from the chaff, without the need for guesswork.
Georgia deserves its first-round playoff bye and its SEC hardware. No one disputes that. But, when a team plays 25% of its 12-game regular-season schedule against nonconference cupcakes, as Georgia did this year, that’s a recipe for committee guesswork.
No matter the schedule, Smart’s Bulldogs will keep winning, while he stands on the soap box.
Blake Toppmeyer is the USA TODAY Network’s senior national college football columnist. Email him at BToppmeyer@gannett.com and follow him on X @btoppmeyer.