Kirby Smart says SEC championship game elimination depends on playoff parameters

ATHENS, Ga. – Alabama athletic director Greg Byrne made headlines this week when he told the USA Today that the SEC championship game had “run its course” and that it was time to end it and go straight into an expanded playoff.

No current SEC coach knows more about the SEC championship game or has seen more sides of it than Georgia’s Kirby Smart. His Bulldogs have won the past two SEC championships and three of the past four and have played in the game in eight of his 10 seasons at Georgia.

Smart told On3 on Thursday that he’s staunchly in favor of an expanded playoff, and if the playoff does indeed expand, that he would be OK with eliminating the SEC championship game.

“But I’d want to know the parameters of it before we did anything,” Smart said. “Where we are right now with 12 teams (in the playoff), I don’t necessarily agree that it needs to quit being played. But if it gets to 16 or 24 and we’ve got to move the end of the season up and we’ve got to get everything done by the second week of January, then I’d say it probably has to go.

“The important thing is we need to gain something, meaning we’re playing that weekend in the first round of the playoff when the SEC championship game is normally being played and playing the season out like an NFL playoff system. But if we’re going to leave it where it is now, with 12 teams in the playoff, I’m not for removing the SEC championship game.”

Byrne called the SEC championship game a “great event,” but said the reality is that it’s going away with an expanded playoff.

Georgia won its first of back-to-back national championships under Smart in 2021 and did so without winning an SEC title. The Bulldogs were upset by Alabama in Atlanta, but then beat the Crimson Tide in a rematch in the national championship game. Georgia also entered the SEC championship game in 2023 on a 29-game winning streak, but lost to Alabama in the SEC championship game and was left out of the playoff, the last year of the four-team format.

“We’ve seen it both ways, but I will never apologize for winning an SEC title,” Smart said. “I think it’s the hardest thing to do in sports, winning the dang SEC title in almost any sport, because our conference is so hard. And when we went to 16 teams in our league, it only made it harder.”

The College Football Playoff will remain at 12 teams in 2026. The SEC and Big Ten weren’t able to agree on a number for expansion in January, and for the playoff to expand, they have to be in agreement on the format. The SEC wants 16, and the Big Ten has proposed a 24-team format. The SEC will go to a nine-team league schedule in 2026 and also requires its teams to play one non-conference game against a Power Four opponent.

LSU’s Lane Kiffin said in 2024, while still the Ole Miss coach, that he had talked to several coaches who didn’t want to be in the SEC championship game.

“I’ll just kind of give you the feeling from some other coaches that they don’t want to be in it,” Kiffin said back in November 2024 when Ole Miss was in contention to make the playoff before losing at Florida later that week. “You know, the reward to get a bye versus the risk to get knocked out completely, that’s a pretty big risk. That’s a really big risk.”

Alabama was beaten soundly by Georgia, 28-7, last year in the SEC championship game, but still got into the playoff with three losses. Alabama coach Kalen DeBoer told On3 earlier this week that if the Crimson Tide had been left out, “it would have been the end of the SEC championship game.”

There’s no timetable for when the playoff may or may not expand, but one SEC source told On3 this week that there was “confidence it will come together.”

It’s no secret in SEC circles that its conference championship game has long been sacred. Former commissioner Roy Kramer came up with the idea when the league expanded and split into divisions, and the first game was played in 1992. Other conferences soon followed with their own championship games.

Mike Slive once called it the second-best game in college football behind only the national championship game. Granted, that was before the latest round of conference expansion and when only four teams made the playoff, but the draw of the SEC championship game remains extremely strong.

It’s been a sellout every year but two since the inaugural game in 1992 in Birmingham and generates around $50 million for the conference in television deals, tickets and sponsorships. It’s also consistently been the most viewed game of the college football regular season and beats half the playoff games in viewership.

The game last year between Alabama and Georgia, a rematch of their regular-season matchup, averaged 16.86 million viewers on ABC, up 2 percent from Georgia-Texas in 2024 (16.63 million).

Georgia’s 28-7 win over Alabama, which peaked with 17.9 million viewers, was the largest audience of the season on ESPN/ABC and third-largest across all networks. But for just the second time since 2008, the SEC championship game was not the most-watched conference championship game, trailing the No. 1 vs. No. 2 Big Ten matchup between Indiana and Ohio State (18.33 million).

“Having grown up and played in the SEC, I get it,” Smart said. “The SEC championship game will always be a big deal.”

Last December, SEC commissioner Greg Sankey told The Athletic that people needed to “slow down” when broaching the topic of eliminating the SEC championship game.

“There’s great meaning in being a champion of the Southeastern Conference. That means something among our fan culture, among our fan base. … I think there will be, just like there has been in the past, ongoing dialogue,” Sankey said. “I understand the questions, and we want to be thoughtful on how we evaluate future directions, particularly when you have something that’s been so successful as what we’ve done with the football championship game.”