Kirby Smart pitches college football mirror basketball with cross-conference challenge

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

“But we’re not going to know until they start putting us all in there and they play cross-conference (tournament) 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 ahead of Saturday’s Top 10 game vs. No. 5 Ole Miss. “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.

Currently, the great equalizer between the Power conferences is national titles. The Big Ten has won the past two College Football Playoff national championships — Michigan (2023) and Ohio State (2024) — but the SEC held dominion over much of the past two decades, having won 13 national titles in 17 years between 2006-22.

“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.”