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Georgia coach Kirby Smart issues warnings at SEC spring meetings
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Georgia coach Kirby Smart issues warnings at SEC spring meetings
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Coach Smart is right about the disease.
The incentives are wrong. The governance is weak. The legal environment is chaotic. The playoff system risks rewarding caution over courage. The financial model is putting pressure on the rest of the athletic department. And the current CFP selection process is not trusted enough to carry the weight being placed on it.
That may be the first place reform has to start.
The CFP selection committee has lost credibility because its decisions too often look biased, inconsistent, and disconnected from real strength of schedule. The committee says strength of schedule matters, but too often its rankings suggest that avoiding losses matters more than playing serious opponents. If teams are punished for playing difficult schedules, they will stop playing difficult schedules. If conference championship games create risk without sufficient reward, schools will eventually question their value. And if the committee cannot clearly explain why one résumé matters more than another, fans are going to assume the process is driven by bias, brand protection, politics, or simple incompetence.
College football does not just need a different group of people in the room. It needs a better structure.
Maybe the answer is a two-layer system: an anonymous football-evaluation panel that ranks teams on merit, insulated from politics and brand pressure, reporting to a rotating oversight committee that reviews the process for consistency, transparency, and conflicts of interest. Let the football people evaluate the teams. Let the oversight committee audit the process, police conflicts, and explain the final decisions. That would not eliminate every argument, but it would make the system harder to manipulate and easier to trust.
Notre Dame also has to be part of that conversation.
The Irish cannot keep claiming independent privilege while demanding equal playoff access. If Notre Dame wants full consideration for the College Football Playoff, then it should join a conference and compete under the same rules, risks, and championship-game obligations as everyone else. Conference teams have to survive a league schedule, deal with conference tiebreakers, and often play an extra championship game that can either strengthen or damage their playoff case. Notre Dame avoids that final risk while still expecting equal treatment from the committee.
That is not equal footing.
But the cure has to be handled carefully.
A breakaway structure may bring order, but it may also accelerate the professionalization Kirby seems to fear. A bigger playoff may create access, but it may also dilute the regular season. Revenue sharing may be fair, but uncontrolled spending may crush non-revenue sports. Stronger rules may be necessary, but they will require a legal structure that actually holds.
The answer is not nostalgia. The old model is not coming back.
But the answer also cannot be a free-for-all where every school protects itself, every coach games the schedule, every player decision becomes a market transaction, every rule is one lawsuit away from collapse, and Notre Dame keeps enjoying special treatment while everyone else carries conference risk.
College football needs a new bargain: pay the players, protect the regular season, reward difficult schedules, preserve Olympic sports, limit calendar creep, reform the CFP selection process, and create rules that can actually be enforced.
That is the real message inside Coach Smart’s comments.
He is not saying Georgia is afraid of the future.
He is saying college football is racing into the future without a true north — no shared values, no trusted rules, and no credible authority strong enough to protect the sport from itself.
@DawgfromILM Well written! It is all so complex with more layers than a large Vidalia Onion.
Love them onions!
I want the following things in the CFP: NO BYES. Get as close to the top 24 teams as is possible. The first round will be a maximum of two weeks after conference championship Saturday. Everyone that gets in will have played 13 games.
Here is my plan:
Rankings going into Conference Championship Saturday (CCS) are the rankings to be used. The rankings will be a "composite" of the CFP committee rankings, the AP rankings, and the Coach's poll rankings. One or more computer based ranking system(s) ranking could be added, if needed to objectively include RPI, SOS, etc. ( I am just not sure which system best does that). We should have the "regular season" rankings (thus the "composite" rankings) by the Monday before CCS. Post CCS rankings are just used as seeding tools. Until Notre Dame joins a conference, they will have to play in one of the "play in" games so they will have played 13 games, but, they will also need to be in the top 24 of the final season rankings. After the 4 Power 4 teams that won their conference championships, the next 20 highest ranked teams are the ones that are most likely to be the teams selected. The highest ranked teams that have played in a conference championship game are in the "sweet sixteen". The highest ranked team not in a conference championship game will play Notre Dame, no more than 7 days after CCS, but preferably on CCS or on the Monday right after CCS. Then the remaining teams ( which are in the top 24 of the rankings and only have played 12 games are looked at according to the rankings composite prior to CCS. The "pool" teams will be required to play in a game in the same time frame as the Notre Dame game ( maximum of 7 days after CCS, but preferably on CCS or the Monday after CCS ). If Notre Dame is the highest ranked of the pool teams, then they will be matched against the lowest ranked team. If they are not the highest ranked, they will play the highest ranked team.
Last year's field would have been (using my system):
Indiana, Georgia, Duke, Texas Tech ( Power 4 Conference Champions )
Alabama, BYU, Virginia, James Madison ( Teams that have played 13 games )
Michigan, Oregon, Ole Miss, Texas A&M, Notre Dame, Miami, Vanderbilt, Texas, Utah, USC, North Texas, Tulane, Arizona, Navy, GA Tech, Iowa ( Pool Teams that only played 12 games )
Play In Games:
Michigan vs Notre Dame
Oregon vs GA Tech
Ole Miss vs Iowa
Texas A&M vs Navy
Miami vs Arizona
Vanderbilt vs Tulane
Texas vs North Texas
Utah vs USC
The 2024 field would have been:
Oregon, Georgia, Arizona State, Clemson ( Power 4 Conference Champions )
Texas, Penn State, SMU, Boise State, UNLV, Army ( Highest rated teams that have played 13 games )
Notre Dame, Tennessee, Ohio State, Indiana, Alabama, Miami, South Carolina, Ole Miss, Iowa State, Colorado, Illinois, Missouri, Syracuse ( eligible pool teams that only played 12 games )
Play-In Games:
Notre Dame vs Missouri
Tennessee vs Illinoi
Ohio State vs Colorado
Indiana vs Ole Miss
Alabama vs Miami
South Carolina vs Iowa State
Notes: Using the composite rankings from before the CCS games are played eliminates a team from being penalized for playing in a conference championship game, and not de-valuing those games. Using composite rankings rather than just CFP Committee rankings helps smooth out any potential bias in the committee ( and would be further smoothed by also including a computerized objective ranking that factors in strength of schedule ). This preserves the value of the regular season. There some differences in the 2025 and 2024 makeup. In 2025, there were only 4 teams that were ranked high enough, so we have exactly 8 qualifying teams ( 4+4 )that have played in conference championship games. That means we need 8 "play-in" games to fill out the 16 team first round. In 2024 we had 10 qualifying 13 game teams ( 4+6 ), so we only need 6 "play-in" games that year. This resulted in Syracuse, a qualified team, being left out as the lowest ranked qualifying team. Another issue is both Army and Navy had only played in 11 games before the start of the CCS. In 2024, Army won on CCS against Tulane in the AAC. but they did not play Navy until the following Saturday, thus getting their 13th game in then. I am for starting the season in what is now known as Week 0, and maybe Army and Navy can get their game in on Rivalry Saturday ( the last Saturday of the "regular" season. I don't know if the desired "exclusivity" of the Army-Navy game can be maintained. The composite rankings I used were AI generated from the CFP rankings, the AP Poll rankings, and the Coach's Poll rankings. This was the fairest system I could come up with. In setting matchups for the play-in games, I tried to not have teams from the same conference play against each other in these games. Also remember that the seedings for the round of 16 can be seedings reflecting the results of the CCS games and the play-in games. I would hope that every effort would be made not to have conference teams face each other in this round, and also not repeat regular season games when possible. Those two things can probably not be maintained for subsequent rounds.24 is too many. 16 at the most.
The national champions in a 24 game plan would play an 18 game season. That's an NFL season.
Football injury risk rises with exposure. More games mean more live-contact snaps, more fatigue, and less recovery time.
A championship-caliber roster might use roughly 55–70 players in a postseason game. If the game injury rate is around the commonly reported college-football competition range of roughly 30–40 injuries per 1,000 athlete-exposures, then each additional playoff game could statistically produce about 2–3 additional reportable injuries per team per game
Over the 5 additional CFP games, the champions should expect 10-15 additional injuries over the post-season play.
Assume those injuries are more common to the better players because they get more snaps.
A 24-team FBS playoff probably does not just add “one more fun round.” For the champion, it could mean an 18-game season and several additional injuries or degraded players by the title game.
I can see the top RBs opting out. I can see some top QBs opting out. Even a kicker. Agents are going to explain in graphic detail their worst case scenarios. Have you ever seen a photo of a compound femur fracture? I see your 24 plan becoming flag football to keep elite player participation.