Georgia vs Alabama All-SEC Title Game is Terrible for College Football
By Jason McIntyre
How can anyone outside of the deep south be excited for an All-SEC National Championship game? For the third year in a row, only one quadrant in the country is represented. The sport is already regional, but becoming increasingly so can’t be good for the sport.
Not only do we get an All-SEC title game between Georgia and Alabama, but it’s a battle of former Alabama coaches, with Nick Saban of the Tide going against his former assistant, Kirby Smart.
It has the feel of a Star Wars Student vs Teacher, Darth Vadar vs Luke Skywalker matchup. Unfortunately, Saban is 11-0 against his former assistants, with all 11 wins coming by at least 14 points. Would anyone be surprised if this were a snoozer?
Instead of the rest of the country talking college football for the next week, we’ll get, “how can we fix this thing to include more of the country?”
It’s not that difficult: Five Conference Champions and three at-large teams is the most fair solution. If you play a tournament-style format and end up with two SEC teams, so be it.
In college basketball, the sport tries to avoid conference matchups at all costs in March Madness, but it does occasionally happen. In 2016, North Carolina (ACC) beat Syracuse (ACC) in the Final Four. Nobody complained because you’ve got to win five games to get there.
An 8-team playoff this year made the most sense:
1 Clemson vs 8 UCF
4 Ohio State vs 5 Alabama
3 Oklahoma vs 6 Wisconsin
2 Georgia vs 7 USC
If you got Alabama vs Georgia out of that, nobody would be complaining now. They would have both earned it. Teams wouldn’t have had that silly month off to prepare for the quarterfinal games. If this is so easy, what is college football waiting for?