Kirby Smart on Finebaum talking about the SEC seceding from the NCAA if playoff expansion goes sideways and I cannot help but laugh. This is the same man who built a dynasty running a pro style offense with a nasty defense that smashes you in the mouth. Now we are sitting here in 2026 with the transfer portal turning every roster into a rental car and the conference schedule getting bloated to nine games and I just think about Coach Dooley in the 1980s. He had a handful of assistant coaches and a bunch of walk ons from south Georgia and we won SEC championships with discipline and toughness. Not with 43 portal transfers like Colorado or 50 like Oklahoma State. Not with NIL bidding wars for high school juniors.
Kirby is absolutely right to push back on this nonsense. The SEC built its reputation on tradition and rivalries that meant something. The 1992 season when we finally got the conference championship game and beat Florida 28 to 21 in the first one. That mattered because those teams had been building for years. Now we are talking about seceding from the NCAA because the playoff format is going to water down what we built. I say let them do it. Take the SEC and the Big Ten and let everyone else figure out their own mess. But do not tell me that replacing our old rivalries with some computer generated schedule is progress. Coach Dooley would have walked out of that meeting room.