In an interview with USA Today on Thursday, Alabama AD Greg Byrne called for the end of the SEC Championship.
“I think the ship has sailed. It’s run its course,” Byrne said.
No offense to Kentucky or Mississippi State, but this isn't the AD of Kentucky or Mississippi State saying this. Alabama practically invented the SEC Champions... err, the SEC Championship was practically invented for Alabama. The Tide have played in the game a league-high 16 times, winning 11, including last season and nine times in the last 14 seasons.
Founded in 1992, the SEC Championship changed the course of college football history. It not only opened up a new frontier of college football real estate, its success paved the way for every other FBS conference to grow to 12, then 14, and now 16/17/18.
The SEC Championship was a de facto national semifinal in 2008 (No. 2 Florida 31, No. 1 Alabama 20), 2009 (No. 2 Alabama 32, No. 1 Florida 13) and 2012 (No. 2 Alabama 32, No. 3 Georgia 28). Those within the conference would tell you the SEC Championship was actually the national title game before the national title game in those years. It also had direct Playoff implications in the 4-team era in 2017 (when No. 6 Georgia knocked out No. 4 Auburn on their way to the title game), 2018, 2019, and 2023, with No. 8 Alabama vaulting all the way to No. 4 while knocking No. 1 Georgia out of the field entirely.
But two years into the 12-team era, the winner and the loser both made the CFP, and so did a team or two watching the game at home from their couch. And in data points that are perhaps coincidental and perhaps not, the SEC title game loser has turned around and won first-round game two weeks later (this past year, the SEC ate its own when Alabama beat Oklahoma) while SEC champ Georgia lost in the quarterfinal both times. In both years, Georgia was beaten by a lower-seeded team who played on the third weekend in December while the 'Dawgs did not, and last season Georgia was beaten by an Ole Miss team who did not have to play in the SEC Championship.
With the SEC playing nine regular-season games for the first time beginning this fall, the league's coaches won't weep at the thought of not having to play a 10th SEC game before embarking on a month-long Playoff journey. It's the suits that are the issue.
Even though their necessity has waned, people still watch. Nearly 17 million people watched a "meaningless" rematch between Alabama and Georgia this past December. The Big Ten set a record with 18.3 million tuned in for a decidedly not meaningless meeting between No. 1 Ohio State and No. 2 Indiana. The Big 12 Championship, also a rematch, drew double the audience of its most-watched regular-season game.
The counterpoint is that people just like watching meaningful college football on their TVs in December, and eliminating conference title games would clear valuable real estate. The NFL has clearly showed it wants to destroy every other sport in its path, even its free minor league. The league continued to play on the third Saturday in December opposite the CFP's opening round, and in 2025 took an even more aggressive posture toward the Playoff. Oregon-James Madison drew a putrid 4.4 million up against Bears-Packers. It's generally not a good thing when one of your 11 playoff games ties the Rate Bowl for the 78th-largest TV audience of the season.
With the NFL not budging, it would benefit college football as a whole to play the Playoff on the first two weekends in December, when the sport is still protected from NFL competition thanks to the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961. Moving the beginning of the CFP forward would hopefully move the end forward as well, opening up the possibility of returning the semifinals to New Year's Day and the championship game to around a week after that*.
Clearing the first weekend in December also paves the way to expand the CFP from 12 to 16 or beyond (hopefully not), which in theory makes the conferences and the networks whole after eliminating title games -- which started for football reasons in the early 1990s, and now exist pretty much to make money and nothing else in 2026.
* The NFL playing a 17-game regular season and six Wild Card games means the second Monday in January is now taken.