Story by
The Tuscaloosa News
The case for discontinuing conference title games, starting with the SECCG | Goodbread
- Story byThe Tuscaloosa News
- The case for discontinuing conference title games, starting with the SECCG | Goodbread
When former SEC Commissioner Roy Kramer trailblazed the concept of conference championship games in college football 32 years ago, he had to summon foresight, a steel nerve, and a hard indifference to the criticism he received for upending the landscape of college football's postseason.
It was institutional disruption, which is never met with anything but pushback.
Advertisement
In 1992, ahead of the inaugural SEC title game against Florida , former Alabama coach Gene Stallings famously grumbled, "We're 11-0 and haven't won anything yet." That captured the sentiment of a fan base that rightly questioned why an undefeated regular season was suddenly no longer a golden ticket straight to a bowl game with a national title as its prize. Now there was yet another test, and a very stiff one, separating the regular season and bowl season. Had Alabama lost to the Gators , it likely wouldn't have gotten the Sugar Bowl bid it needed to beat Miami, 34-13, for the '92 national crown.
GOODBREAD: Alabama football has risen from CFP ashes, and I was wrong to bury it
GOODBREAD: Alabama football roster more than ready for help from DeBoer's first signing class
The last thing Kramer needed was to cost his own conference a national title with an extra game he invented, and had it not been for UA's 28-21 win over Florida, the heat on him would've ramped up not just from Tuscaloosa, but from every campus in the SEC except, perhaps, Gainesville. Fast-forward 32 years, and it's the right moment for SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey to follow Kramer's lead, and show the same foresight and nerve in doing the unthinkable: discontinue the SEC Championship Game.
Advertisement
It's time.
Time to go, that is.
With the advent of the College Football Playoff's expansion to 12 teams, conference championship games have now run their useful course. The 12-team playoff field makes them more superfluous than ever before. In a four-team playoff, they had a way of providing more clarity as to who belonged in the playoff and who didn't. But with a 12-team playoff, the regular season is far better equipped to arbitrate between the 12th- and 13th-best teams in the country than it was the fourth- and fifth-best.
Conference title games are now a useless appendage. A bridge over land.
Advertisement
Their absence wouldn't adversely affect the 12-team playoff format whatsoever. Conference champions could be determined the old way, through regular season results, and they would earn the playoff bye without having to win an extra game. It would be better for the players, who would be at a lower risk of injury. Better for fans who like to travel, who could save a few more bucks for a playoff trip. And better for the CFP selection committee, which would never be faced with the quandary of whether to accept a team that didn't reach its conference title game while eliminating the team that lost it.
Upside all around.
Want another good reason to dump them? How about the length of the season for playoff qualifiers? For decades, college presidents resisted the four-team playoff format in favor of settling national championships through the bowl system because they claimed the extra games were too much of a physical and academic strain on the players. Now, purely in the name of profit, they've green-lighted an expanded playoff that extends the season to Jan. 20, and demands up to 17 games (17!!!) to win a national championship.
Fans can't get enough games, but that doesn't mean 17 isn't too many.
Advertisement
Conference championship games do big TV ratings, especially when there are high stakes involved, and therefore bring in serious revenue. That gives them unshakeable staying power. But the revenue they generate doesn't make them better for the sport. After Kramer's bold move paid off in 1992, other conferences followed suit with divisional play and championship games of their own, resulting in more money for the system.
Now, they're baked in.
And that's why it would take a bold move by an industry power broker like Sankey to bake them out. In its own, different way, it would be as bold as the move Kramer made in creating conference title games. And just as surely as the rest of college football followed Kramer's lead 32 years ago, they'd follow Sankey's if he took the lead in dismantling them.
More than three decades after Stallings wondered why 11 games wasn't enough, a coach will soon be asking why 16 isn't enough.
Advertisement
Time to trim some fat.
And it's obvious where it is.
Tuscaloosa News sport columnist Chase Goodbread.
Tuscaloosa News columnist Chase Goodbread is also the weekly co-host of Crimson Cover TV on WVUA-23. Reach him at cgoodbread@gannett.com. Follow on X.com @chasegoodbread.
This article originally appeared on The Tuscaloosa News: The case for discontinuing conference title games, starting with SECCG
