Georgia coach warns college football to not devalue regular season

The risk of college football’s regular season losing value has been a concern ever since the first expansion of the playoff, and now with another expansion likely on the horizon, there’s more unease about potentially stripping the fall season of its excitement.

It’s a concern that Georgia head coach Kirby Smart brought up as the SEC spring meetings kick off this week, saying he wouldn’t support any changes that take away from the unique regular season experience.

“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 baseball, softball regionals, and you play to try to get yourself in?” Smart said.

“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 they’d have a play-in game? I don’t know if I agree with that.”

Another subject of speculation is the fate of Championship Saturday, when conferences wrap up the season by crowning a champ on the field, a tradition spurred on by the SEC with its title game starting back in 1992.

With the prospect of conferences earning automatic qualifiers to the College Football Playoff, some analysts have wondered whether that first Saturday in December could become a thing of the past.

“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,” he said.

“You don’t see a regular season basketball champion going into the 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.”

As far as the SEC, the current expectation is that it, along with the Big Ten, will support the implementation of a 16-team College Football Playoff, and are looking to design it in a way that will benefit both conferences.

Current reporting suggests the SEC and Big Ten are in line to receive four automatic qualifiers each, with the ACC and Big 12 receiving two bids each.

Naturally, the latter two conferences aren’t very fond of that idea, but with the extra power college football’s Big Two leagues now have, it’s hard to see a way they can stop it.

Just as long as they don’t take away from the regular season.

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