ATLANTA — Kirby Smart felt it in pregame. He felt it later in the game, too.
All he needed to do was look up in the stands at Mercedes-Benz Stadium at any point on Saturday and he’d see a few thousand empty seats in the upper deck during Georgia’s 22-19 overtime win over Texas.
Call it a sign of the times.
It just means more?
For championship weekend, “It used to mean more” is far more apt.
“I hate to say it, but in pregame, I didn’t think the game had the same juice and atmosphere I’ve seen it have before,” Smart said.
On Saturday morning, commissioners of the ACC and SEC campaigned on “College Gameday” for more teams in their respective leagues to be included in the College Football Playoff. An additional team in the field would improve both leagues’ national title odds. What else would help those odds? Not making their two best teams play a 13th game while every other team in the conference sits at home.
Smart acknowledged the stadium came alive after kickoff, in part because it was a back-and-forth game filled with drama. But even he felt the stakes were lower than ever when he called for a fake punt with 11 minutes left in his own territory with the game tied.
“It’s a lot easier to call it when you think you’re in the Playoff either way,” Smart said.
Championship weekend has come and gone, but the games in their current form need to stay away.
Conference title games are vestiges of a bygone era in college football. They’re moneymakers and can stay that way (more on that later), but in their current form, it’s a nonsensical tradition as college football steps into a new era.
Carson Beck was injured on the final play of the first half and is currently on the sideline pic.twitter.com/iB4hWkBREh
— FOX College Football (@CFBONFOX) December 7, 2024
Why did Texas need to play this game?
The Longhorns won the SEC outright in the regular season — albeit with an unbalanced schedule that didn’t include Alabama, Tennessee, Ole Miss or South Carolina.
But the SEC — and the Big Ten on Saturday night — are asking their two best teams and the two teams most likely to win the national title to play an additional game that no one else in the conference has to play.
In Texas’ case, if it wins the national title, it will have played 17 (!!) games.
The Longhorns will end up playing two additional games just to reach the spot in the bracket they would have started at had been awarded the conference title for their regular season performance: the College Football Playoff quarterfinals.
Georgia will shoot up the bracket and earn one of the four precious first-round byes, but doing so might have cost them their starting quarterback.
Carson Beck suffered what appeared to be an elbow injury on the last play of the first half. Smart called it an “upper extremity” injury and Beck spent the second half with his elbow on ice. He couldn’t throw the ball and struggled with grip strength before athletic trainers decided he would be unavailable for the second half. He took a snap on the game’s final play and handed the ball off, but his health is still uncertain until he gets an MRI in the next few days.
My co-host on “Until Saturday,” The Athletic’s college football podcast, is Damien Harris, a two-time national champion at Alabama. He likes to say the injury rate of football games is 100 percent: Everyone who plays is leaving a little banged up one way or another.
Georgia learned that the hard way on Saturday. It was down to its third-string holder after Beck and punter Brett Thorson were injured.
But in almost any season moving forward, the top two teams in the Big Ten and SEC are going to be in the Playoff field regardless of the result of the title game. Asking them to crash into each other for four hours ahead of a four-round, one-month race to a national title makes no sense.
In the 12-team Playoff era, conference titles have never meant less. That’s an unsavory idea for some but this is the world the sport has elected to inhabit.
Fans can sense it. Texas has one of the nation’s biggest fan bases. Saturday’s game was local for Georgia, but around only 20 percent of the fans in the building were wearing burnt orange. Ticket prices for the game were a fraction of what they were a week ago for Texas’ rivalry renewal against Texas A&M in College Station.
Why would a Texas fan spend money on tickets and travel to Atlanta for a mostly symbolic title instead of saving for a trip to the quarterfinal, semifinal or title game down the road?
It’s asking too much of fans and it was palpable in the building on Saturday. The stakes weren’t what they had been in the past when Georgia and Alabama clashed in what felt like winner-take-all matchups in the four-team era. Nobody’s chips were all in the pot on Saturday and fans weren’t going to pay to see it.
So what’s the alternative? The SEC earns well into eight figures from TV networks to play this game, which is part of the overall package that ESPN and ABC purchased the rights to broadcast. It’s not going away.
But it can become something else. I’ll admit the specifics of my suggestion are … muddy.
But the scene and stakes would improve if it were something closer to a play-in game and marketed as the unofficial start to the Playoff. There’s no reason Texas and Georgia need to put their bodies on the line. The same was true of SMU in the ACC after the Mustangs went undefeated in conference play.
What if Saturday featured South Carolina and Ole Miss or Alabama as an opportunity to punch their ticket in a win-or-go-home game?
I ran into South Carolina coach Shane Beamer on the field before Saturday’s game and he knew his team’s chances of being included in the field were slim to none. He’d have killed for an opportunity to improve those odds. This event would be better if teams like his were given that chance.
This might make more sense when the Playoff expands to 14 or 16 teams and if the Big Ten and SEC negotiate a specific number of automatic bids. Forcing teams in fourth or fifth place to play in this game instead of the teams in first and second would be a reasonable request.
It’s not perfect. But it makes more sense than the current model.
Nothing about the current state of college football makes sense.
Playing eight conference games — as the SEC does, compared to the Big Ten’s nine — in a league with 16 teams and then asking your best teams to play another game against a Playoff-caliber opponent is asinine. Especially when the game is for little more than seeding.
But this is the place where college football has landed after chasing its tail — and ever-rising TV paychecks — for decades.
Determining conference titles based on tiebreakers or unbalanced schedules isn’t perfect. But clinging to an outdated model of crowning a conference champion is a great way to cost your conference national titles.
Beck’s elbow might heal in time for him to play in the Playoff, but it also might be a season-ending injury. Would winning an SEC title be worth sacrificing a real chance at a national title? There’s not a Georgia fan alive who would take that trade.
Georgia’s title hopes hinge on the health of Beck’s elbow, which would be fine if the Bulldogs had spent Saturday resting and relaxing instead of going head-to-head with one of the most physical teams in America for 60 minutes.
Winning a conference championship was once a grand tradition.
Now, it’s just an unnecessary risk.
(Photo of Kirby Smart: Todd Kirkland / Getty Images)
