Great article here from Dawgs Central that captures all he said, but let me unpack it into the topics I know we’re all eager to heard about.
On Neutral Site Games
“I love the games, so it’s not a matter of whether it’s home and home or neutral site. You know, you ask the fan base, you could get an interesting dynamic. Everybody wants to go to another campus, everybody wants to have an extra home game for a non-conference, great game. But everybody likes neutral site games too, so there’s opportunities to go to a different place. Jacksonville, Nashville, Atlanta, Charlotte, just to say the least. They’re really cool experiences for our fan base to go to a place they don’t usually go to.
“I’m more interested in the matchup than I am where it is. I don’t really care if it’s neutral site or home-and-home. I just hate it. I feel like we’re all gravitating away from these because of appearance to the committee. I’ve got to win, I can’t have a loss, I can’t play the schedule I want to play. I’ve got nine games and a conference, so now we’re moving away. That concerns me more than where that game is. I could care less if it’s home and home or neutral site.”
On the SEC Championship Game
“I love the SEC championship game. I’ve been a big fan of that. I grew up watching it. I’ve talked about it many times, almost ad nauseum about it. The first time they ever played in Birmingham, I was in the high school playoffs playing a Final Four football game and watching Florida and Alabama play. At the time, that was like a childhood dream. Long time since then, and a lot of changes since then.
“Is it the revenue stream that we’re having to fund our athletic programs with that we need because of it? Is it the calendar that we need to shrink so we’re not playing a championship game on late January? I don’t think that’s great for student-athletes. I don’t think it’s great for the transfer portal to be ending the season that late.
“If that championship game is in the way of that or gets put on the back burner because of that, I think you’d have to accept it. I’m really more worried about the financial burden that we’re under right now of paying for all of the athletic department. When you take that revenue stream out, can we make it work? Is it sustainable to do without it would be my biggest concern.”
On the Possibility of the SEC Breaking Away from CFB
“Well, the second part of the question I don’t have the answer to, but I’ve said this for a long time to our president. I’ve been a huge advocate that if we can’t find the rules that everybody plays by, then we should play our own. I’m not afraid of that. I’m not afraid to break away and say that our conference is strong enough to go out now and play. I mean, if we could actually function, and it financially would make our programs more stable and we could support things financially — I’m talking about all the sports — and do by our own rules, I’d be all for that. I mean, I’ve been to this meeting now 10, 11 times, and it’s frustrating at times to say, ‘Well, we can’t do this because of litigation, We can’t do this because of litigation, we can’t do this because we’ll get sued, we can’t do that.’ And we’re just trying to do things for the betterment of the sport and the betterment of the student-athletes, and that’s not curtailing what money they make. I’m not advocating that they make less money. I’m fine with what student-athletes make. I’m trying to make it where it’s as equal and it’s comparable footing for everybody and it’s not a race to the bottom, as they say.”
On Whether 24 Teams Weakens the CFP:
“Absolutely it can. But I want to go back to self-preservation. If you ask enough people, they want an opportunity to be in the party, and if they don’t make the party, they get fired. So then they’re worried about the party, not the dilution of the market.
“So there’s competing interests here that I think are unfortunate. I don’t want it to be a diluted market. I think there’s going to be more blowouts. If that happens, it’s going to happen, but that happened in the old model. I mean, let’s be honest. It happened with 12 before. So you’re not going to get perfect games, perfect scenarios, but there will be games that lose some of their meaning leading up to that. But maybe there’s more great games in the 24-team model than there are in the 12 or the 16. I don’t know.
“I’m not here to decide how many teams should be in it. I would much rather talk about how the teams are decided that are in it.”
Also, there was this interesting tidbit caught as a soundbyte yesterday:
Hoo boy, let the criticism start with that one. Or, maybe instead, just get infuriated at what could be the expanded expanded playoff bracket:
I’d say that’s a joke, but here we are today, just two years into the expansion, and we’re already expanding more. First 4, then 12, now 16 or 24, next…48? 96?
A simpler response with a fan’s perspective:
1) Other than 3 games (Red River Shootout, Cocktail Party, Army-Navy) plus conference championships, play college football on college campuses until the national championship game. Screw the bowl games. Screw the cities with empty hotel rooms, an empty NFL stadium, and empty downtown restaurants on Labor Day weekend.
2) Play the SEC championship game regardless of the calendar. It’s a better game than practically every game on the CFP schedule. Putting a number on the wall matters.
3) I don’t give a damn what the SEC does. If I were Greg Sankey, I would tell the ACC (sans Notre Dame) and the Big 12 that the Big 10 has done nothing for them (the ACC should have already learned that lesson, but Jim Phillips can’t resist aligning with them). Most of the schools in that 3 conference footprint have a LOT in common culturally. Tell the Big 10 and Notre Dame to pound sand. Pool your collective media rights and form your own organization.
4) I don’t care if 24 weakens the CFP. 24 weakens the meaning of the regular season. I don’t give a damn about coaches’ job security (they are back to being overpaid PE teachers in my mind for how they’re acting about this). There’s value in scarcity sometimes. This is one of those times.
Kirby seems to be more interested in being liked by his peers around these issues rather than representing the best interest of the sport and its fans.
At this point, college sports deserves the NASCAR treatment and to be a Harvard Business School case for how to ruin your brand.
Silver lining to the NIL era is that Kirby has seemingly abandoned his recruiting related objections to UGA/UF playing in Jacksonville.
Post of the day!
Funny, hypocritical and true since recruiting is now a $$$ negotiation through agents not on campus visits. What will the cute “hostesses” do for work now?
The EXACT contradiction I was thinking of while listening to his comments on the matter. Have restrictions for hosting recruits at neutral sites changed? Or is this indicative of how much recruiting itself has changed?
Yes. Georgia and Florida always had the ability to host recruits in Jacksonville as the home team, but they elected not to do it.
Yes. Money talks, and you know what walks. Recruiting is a shell of what it once was. Unintended consequences are a bitch. I would never subscribe to a recruiting site now (and didn’t then either).
I once cared about recruiting but with the way it is now I DGAS any more. We literally don’t know all the players on the team until the first game in September. I’ll still watch the games but screw keeping up with recruiting, and the transfer portal ended my interest in everything but the actual games.
“I would much rather talk about how the teams are decided that are in it.”….Looking at the 2023 committee decisions right there…
DIW, I hate to say it, but the committee screwed Florida State way more than it screwed us. With the way the season was progressing, it was clear Georgia and Alabama were on a collision course in a de facto quarterfinal in Atlanta. Texas had the OOC road win over Alabama and a conference championship. Michigan, Washington and FSU were undefeated.
Whether Texas had won or lost that day, the SECCG loser was going to be on the outside looking in.
Agree, Georgia blew their shot. That was one of Saban’s worst teams. FSU gets blown out without a qb but undefeated is undefeated. Georgia 3 peats easily with a real OC.
Kirby still calls them “student athletes”. That’s quaint.
Why shouldn’t he? They are students and athletes. Many of them may not attend college classes like we did, but most of them attend in person just as their peers.
In the sports outside of football and men’s basketball, most of them are students pursuing meaningful degrees to prepare for life after sports.
$40mm roster. Kirby doesn’t have a “student athlete” within 100 yards of Payne IPF!!! They are all “PROFESSIONALS”.
No question these guys are being paid handsomely to play football. “Student athlete” doesn’t imply amateur.
Apparently, attending class has gone with the wind, computer classes with tutors for the win.
If you think athletes were doing all of their own work on their own before the advent of online classes, I’m pretty sure they weren’t.
“Athlete Students,” lol
College football has the worst offseason in all of sports. A true shit show.
Check that survey about fans wanting to go to other cities Kirby. Few want to give up a home game for Charlotte, Tampa, Nashville, Orlando, NOLA or Memphis. It’s not fair and disingenuous to say how we love Georgia – Florida in JAX with meaning we love neutral site games. Can you imagine playing TAMU (finally) in Dallas?! Or tOSU in Indianapolis?
At least he touched on the real truths…this is all about money, there are no rules, the committee sucks and the coaches are only out to save their own asses (despite the guarantees). Nothing in this is for the fans now that at least the players make bank.