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What is SEC championship game's future? Alabama AD says, 'The ship has sailed'
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- What is SEC championship game's future? Alabama AD says, 'The ship has sailed'
TUSCALOOSA, AL – The boss of Alabama athletics believes the SEC championship game should be no more.
End it.
"I think the ship has sailed. It's run its course," Alabama athletic director Greg Byrne said of the SEC championship game, during an exclusive interview with USA TODAY.
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Folks, this is seismic.
Consider the source. This isn't some gadfly calling for change.
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We're talking about the veteran AD at Ala-bama . The Crimson Tide made the Georgia Dome and then Mercedes-Benz Stadium their home away from home the past 30-plus years.
Since the SEC became the first conference to introduce a conference championship game in the 1992 season, no team has played for the championship or won more titles than the Crimson Tide.
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Now, though, Byrne would prefer to proceed directly from the regular season to the CFP.
"It's a great event," Byrne said of the SEC championship game. "I don't like the idea of it going away, but I think it's reality, with an expanded playoff."
Byrne emphasized he's but one voice, but he must know he's a prominent voice. He's not alone in his opinion, either.
Two prominent athletic directors favor dumping SEC championship
Earlier this offseason, Texas athletic director Chris Del Conte indicated his preference to dump the SEC championship game.
Even before Byrne and Del Conte spoke out, SEC coaches started to question the utility of a game that used to be one of the big events on the college football calendar.
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"(Coaches) don't want to be in it," Lane Kiffin said in 2024.
These are not whimsical musings from pundits and pot-stirrers.
When coaches don't think the juice of the SEC Championship is worth the squeeze, and when prominent athletic directors like Byrne and Del Conte think it's time to end the game, you must take seriously that conference championship games are an endangered species.
"Why have a conference championship game?" Del Conte said in February.
The obvious answer to that question: Money.
The SEC championship generates gobs of it.
How, then, to offset that lost revenue if the SEC championship went bye-bye?
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Byrne's proposal: Expand the playoff.
"If you're going to a 16-team playoff, you're adding more games," Byrne said. "I would imagine it would be pretty good content."
By pretty good, he also means revenue-generating.
Greg Byrne: Drop SEC Championship. Go to 16-team playoff
To be clear, the playoff isn't going to 16 teams — yet, anyway. The playoff will remain at 12 for at least the 2026 season, because the SEC and Big Ten could not come to terms on a playoff expansion plan.
The SEC, ACC and Big 12 favored a proposal to expand the playoff to 16 teams, using a 5+11 format. The Big Ten stood in persistent opposition while uncorking a variety of other plans, the latest of which revolve around 24 teams.
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Some SEC coaches, like Tennessee 's Josh Heupel and Georgia's Kirby Smart, have voiced interest in 24 teams .
At Alabama , Byrne continues to favor 16.
"I think we need to pick a lane," he said. "We were headed for 16, and then there seemed to be pressure for 24. So, as soon as we get to 24, I guess you could say, 'Well, we better go to 48.' I mean, at some point, we have to pick a lane."
Byrne's lane: Sixteen-team playoff. No SEC championship game. Start the playoff sooner. Conclude the playoff sooner.
Byrne's preference for a 16-team playoff would include an automatic bid awarded to each of the Power Four conferences, plus a Group of Six auto bid, and then 11 at-large bids.
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How would the SEC's automatic bid be decided if the conference championship went away? Byrne's suggestion: Award the bid to the first-place team in the standings, with tiebreaker protocol used if necessary.
"The top teams in the SEC are going to get in," Byrne said, whether via automatic bid or at-large selection.
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SEC Championship built within a bygone era, before the playoff existed
Conference championship games weren't built for this era. Former SEC commissioner Roy Kramer launched the conference championship and revolutionized the first weekend in December within a bygone ecosystem.
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No playoff existed back then. The conference championship became a way to create a prize (and more exposure and revenue) between the end of the regular season and bowl games. Other conferences eventually followed the SEC's lead.
After the arrival of the BCS era and then the four-team playoff, conference championship games served as an important data point for postseason selection.
Once the playoff grew to 12 teams, the SEC championship game surrendered some clout. Consider last season. Georgia beat Alabama 28-7 on Dec. 6 in Atlanta. No sooner had the game ended than all focus shifted to the playoff — in particular, whether Alabama's loss would cost it a playoff spot, even as other SEC teams not in the game enjoyed firm footing for qualification.
"There was some sweating," Byrne said. "We were puckered up, Saturday night and into Sunday."
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As it turned out, neither Georgia nor Alabama budged even one spot in the CFP rankings that came out the next day. Georgia took home an SEC trophy, but, otherwise, it was as if the game never happened.
A crowd of 77,247 turned out that December day in Atlanta, but the energy inside the building paled in comparison to the environment a month later, when Indiana fans turned Atlanta into their personal play pen, and the Hoosiers routed Oregon in a playoff game.
If you attended both games, you couldn't help but wonder if one of those games might be headed toward extinction. Hint: It's not the playoff game. Conference championship games are living on borrowed time.
Blake Toppmeyer is the USA TODAY Network's senior national college football columnist. Email him at BToppmeyer@gannett.com and follow him on X @btoppmeyer .
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Time to end SEC championship game in football? Alabama boss says yes
