The SEC Championship game is officially on life support. Alabama's Athletic Director was the first to proclaim his desire for the game to stop being played, and now none other than Kirby Smart has followed suit.
Smart's opinion on the game does differ slightly from Alabama's AD, but he admitted on Thursday that there is a scenario where he would want the SEC title game to be cancelled.
"Where we are right now with 12 teams, I don’t necessarily agree that it needs to quit being played,” Smart said via x.com. “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."
Kirby Smart makes the case for the SEC Championship game to end
Alabama’s AD said that he wants the championship game to stop being played right now. He didn’t provide any specific reasoning to support his claim, and that is why his opinion is hard to understand.
Smart thankfully did provide an explanation behind his opinion, and it has everything to do with College Football Playoff expansion.
He doesn’t want the game to stop being played today, but if the playoff expands beyond 12 teams then he wants the game to end. Why is that? Games are already being crammed in way too fast, and adding more playoff games takes that to another level. So to give Georgia a better chance to succeed in the playoff he thinks it would be better to not play another game to give them an extra week of rest.
This would be a disappointing side effect of playoff expansion because the SEC Championship game is so special. Even when Georgia isn't playing it is still an exciting game to watch. So is playoff expansion worth it if conferences start eliminating their championship games?
Most fans would probably say no, but unfortunately money talks and that is why the playoff will likely expand again in the next few years.