Kirby Smart pleads for college football to avoid devaluing regular season

The future of how the expanded College Football Playoff looks beyond the upcoming 2025 season has been the talk of the offseason. That has included an array of different format proposals from the Power Four conferences.

One of the most talked-about formats is the Big Ten-approved 16-team “4-4-2-2-1” model that would give the Big Ten and SEC four automatic bids apiece while the ACC and Big 12 receive two bids apiece and either Notre Dame or the highest-ranked Group of Six conference champion getting the final bid. That format would also allow for three at-large bids.

While the ACC and Big 12 have already voiced strong opposition to that partciular model, the SEC and Big Ten have also discussed potentialy doing away with their tradition conference championship game weekends in favor of a series of play-in games to secure their league’s automatic bids. Other proposed models — including one that guarantees bids for the five highest-ranked conference champions (the Power Four and one Group of Six winner) and 11 at-large bids — don’t necessarily allow for those play-in game opportunties, which could be a financial boom for the Big Ten and SEC.

Given the uncertainty at play, Georgia head coach Kirby Smart made it clear he doesn’t favor any CFP format that devalues the regular season.

“I don’t know the formats they’re talking about. … I know a lot of that is going to be determined by television revenue, what’s best for that championship weekend. Is it a play-in game? Is it like your baseball, softball regionals and you play to try and get yourself in?” Smart said Tuesday from the Sandestin Hilton, home of the annual SEC Spring Meetings in Destin, Fla. “I don’t want to devalue the regular season. I do think there’s a lot of value in the regular season. I don’t think a team that I guess like Texas last year, they’re the 1-seed going into the SEC Championship and there are scenarios out there that (now) they’d have a play-in game? I don’t know if I agree with that.

“They can play a championship game or they can play a game, but there should be some value to a regular season in terms of how you perform and what you do. You don’t see a regular season basketball champion going into SEC Tournament play and then not make the (NCAA) Tournament. It’s not going to happen, right? … But I enjoy the SEC Championship. I’m a firm believer in that, but I’m going to support whatever as a conference we choose to do in that format.”

Kirby Smart compares how SEC postseason spots are handled in football, other sports

Georgia football head coach Kirby Smart opened his Tuesday media availability at the 2025 SEC Spring Meetings on Tuesday to discuss how SEC postseason spots are handled in football and other sports around the conference.

To make his point, Smart acknowledged that just this past season, 14 of the 16 SEC schools made the NCAA Basketball and Softball Tournament while 13 made the NCAA Baseball Tournament.

“I look at women’s softball, I look at men’s basketball, I look at men’s baseball,” Smart said. “It just absolutely blows my mind how the SEC can end up with the teams they end up with in those positions. If you look at the [other sports], 13 of 16 or 14 of 16 (and they’re larger pools) but you see what they’re able to do and there’s no outcry.”

Finally, Smart ended his opening comments by discussing the importance of RPI and strength of schedule that the selection committee imposes on the entire sport.

“They do a lot of things based on RPI and strength of schedule. They award teams for that,” Smart continued. “I have a hard time seeing Ole Miss, Alabama and South Carolina not being in the best teams last year, and that’s for me a big part of the SEC. People want to say ‘well, you need to play nine games or eight games.’ We don’t really know which of those to do until we know the Playoff format.

“I beg everybody in this room to question would we have been better off not playing Clemson last year or be play another SEC game to make nine games. How would that have been better for the SEC? How would that have been better for Georgia? I don’t think it would have.”

— On3’s Daniel Hager contributed to this report.