Kirby Smart endorses College Football Playoff expansion to entice more opportunities

There hadn’t been a ton of in-season talk recently about future expansion of the College Football Playoff. Georgia’s Kirby Smart provided some this afternoon, though, as he’s in favor of it in the future of the sport’s postseason.

Appearing on ‘The Pat McAfee Show’ on Friday from Athens, Smart was asked about the positive state of college football right now, with ratings doing very well in the era of the 12-team playoff. However, he wondered why that would be the case if we continued to expand the playoff for more teams to have access to the CFP.

“Would they not be if it was 16, or 24, or 30 teams? I think they still would be. I think the ratings would still be higher,” Smart said. “I think you’d have unbelievable playoffs. It’s going to mimic the NFL when we get to having that many teams potentially in the playoffs, so you get better matchups for longer. Because these games at the end of the year are going to come down to essentially being play-in games. You’re either in or you’re out.”

“I would love to see a bigger pool of teams make the playoff, because that’s what all our fanbases want is an opportunity to do that,” Smart said.

Again, talks of playoff expansion happen more throughout the offseason. Still, some coaches continue to make the case for more spots in the field into the fall.

As of today, at the halfway point of this season, there’s no guarantee yet that Georgia will get in this year in the current model of the CFP. The Bulldogs are 5-1 overall, but have three games left against ranked competition with, at the moment, No. 5 Ole Miss, No. 21 Texas, and No. 12 Georgia Tech. They also already have their one loss in conference play, with them presently being under at-large consideration rather than having the chance to win their way in with the SEC Championship.

The point is that, regardless of how many teams are in it, fans are going to watch college football, especially come time for the College Football Playoff. So, that in mind, Smart didn’t see what the difference would be in however many teams were in the field, rather than just the current model of a dozen.

Smart pitches college football mirror basketball with cross-conference challenge

Smart has an idea on how to resolve the “greatest debate” in college football — create an annual Big Ten vs. SEC event that pits the sport’s two biggest conferences against one another. He even referenced the yearly ACC-SEC Challenge in men’s and women’s basketball as an example of how it could work.

“We’re not going to know until they start putting us all in there and they play cross-conference, like they do in basketball, I’d love to do one of those with another conference,” Smart said Friday afternoon in an appearance on ‘The Pat McAfee Show’. “That’s one of Lane (Kiffin’s) biggest complaints, and Lane is very bright, and Lane’s biggest concern is we’re losing opportunities to play other conferences when we schedule nine conference games. … There’s less opportunities for us to play other conferences. And the only way to measure conference-to-conference (are head-to-head matchups).”

Earlier this season, the SEC announced it will be moving to a nine-game conference schedule beginning in 2026 to better align with the other Power Four conferences like the Big Ten and Big 12. In addition to the nine-game conference schedule, the SEC mandated each of its teams must annually schedule at least one Power 4 opponent, though many already had those matchups scheduled out well into the 2030s.

Given the fact that most SEC teams already have their future schedules locked up a decade out, creating an in-season conference-to-conference challenge might be difficult to do in football. That said, Smart’s suggestion would certainly go a long way to helping settle the sport’s great debate about college football’s top conference.

“I think the greatest debate right now in college football is … other conferences saying, ‘Ah, well, the SEC just has all these teams ranked, but they don’t deserve to be ranked and they play each other and beat each other up.’ But I don’t think we’ll ever know the truth,” Smart added. “I always say: go poll the NFL scouts and get them to tell you where they’re pulling from and where they’re drafting from, and that usually equals the best teams. Who has the most players drafted? (Georgia) did when we won the national championship. Michigan did when they won the national championship. Ohio State did when they won the national championship. Just look at that and that’ll tell you where the best players and teams are.”