Scott has followed South Carolina athletics for over 40 years and provides commentary from a fan perspective. He writes a weekly newsletter (this email) year-round and a column during football season that’s published each Monday on GamecockCentral.com.
Scott Davis: Radical Solutions Needed for Radically Different Game
Remember that smile on Steve Spurrier’s face?
Back in 2010, Spurrier stood with his players in a jubilant locker room in Gainesville after the Gamecocks had dispatched the Ball Coach’s alma mater to punch their ticket to the SEC Championship Game.
“We’re going to Atlanta,” Spurrier said, a grin as wide as the Congaree River stretching across his face when he mentioned the site of the SEC Championship Game.
That moment might be my most memorable in a lifetime of following South Carolina football. My team? In Atlanta? It seemed like a dream.
Sixteen years later, that 2010 team remains the only Gamecock squad that has been to Atlanta. And we’ll never forget them for it.
For decades, since the inauguration of the SEC Championship Game in 1992, “going to Atlanta” has been shorthand across the league for maximum success. It means you’re playing for a conference title. It means you’re probably in the mix to win a national championship.
If you were going to Atlanta, your program was at the pinnacle of the sport.
But within a couple of years, it’s highly probable that no SEC team will be going to Atlanta to duke it out with a conference foe for a title. As the sport’s leaders eye an expansion to the College Football Playoff from 12 teams to 16 or even 24, conference title games would likely be deemed redundant and unnecessary.
And it’s hard to argue that they wouldn’t be.
When I was a student at South Carolina in the ‘90s, watching a series of mostly dreadful teams suffer inside Williams-Brice Stadium, I longed for the opportunity to follow one to Atlanta.
I was obsessed with the cachet and the deeper meaning of the SEC Championship Game – it felt like everything that mattered about college football.
But now, years later, I can’t help but agree with those who believe the game’s time has passed.
College football is a radically different game in 2026.
And it needs radical new solutions to meet the future.
The End is Near
Georgia head coach Kirby Smart – who has coached in what seems like 40 or 50 SEC Championship Games – was asked about the game’s future recently. He acknowledged that its days may be numbered.
“If it (the Playoff) gets to 16 or 24 and we’ve got to move the end of the season up and we’ve got to get everything done by the second week of January, then I’d say it probably has to go," Smart said in a recent Sports Illustrated article.
Alabama athletic director Greg Byrne was even more blunt in a chat with USA Today. “I think the ship has sailed," Byrne said. "It's run its course. ... It's a great event. I don't like the idea of it going away, but I think it's reality, with an expanded playoff."
South Carolina’s Shane Beamer addressed those comments last week when assessing his team’s conclusion to spring practice, noting, “I love the championship game. I would hate to see it go away, but I also understand that, you know, there are different factors at play now with college athletics and college football specifically, and how it’s changing.”
It is indeed changing.
It’s appropriate that Smart and Byrne had thoughts on the title game, because their teams just played in the most recent one – a 28-7 Georgia victory. Meanwhile, Oklahoma, Texas A&M and Ole Miss ultimately all joined those two teams in the College Football Playoff, but the Sooners, Aggies and Rebels didn’t have to waste any effort on the SEC title game in Atlanta. They rested, practiced and got ready to play for a national championship.
And ultimately, fans were left to wonder exactly what Georgia and Alabama had been playing for when they met at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta.
Keep the Changes Coming
My guess is that the conference championships won’t be the only traditional contests to go by the wayside with an expanded playoff.
It’s hard to imagine bowl games having much of a future going forward, at least in the format in which they currently exist.
Back in January, I wrote about my growing disinterest in bowl games, reaching the conclusion that it was no longer just the stuff in Shreveport and Birmingham that I didn’t care about. I didn’t care about the alleged “upper-tier” bowls, either, including the Citrus and the Gator.
With a growing number of teams making the playoff and fighting to win actual national championships rather than trophies emblazoned with snack foods, it’s growing impossible to make a case for these chamber of commerce matchups that have survived into the modern age like relics from the era of black-and-white television sets and 8-track cassette players.
Why does the Birmingham Bowl exist in 2026? It’s a question no one can answer.
A grouchy reader responded to my column about my bowl disillusionment by asking, unforgettably, “Why do bowl games need to matter?”, which is a question that answers itself merely by being posed.
All games need to matter if they’re going to be played and counted in the record books. And if they don’t matter? Well, maybe they shouldn’t be played. While we’re here, the conference tournaments in men’s and women’s basketball should probably get the hook, too, as long as we’re cleaning house. Those no longer matter, either.
In the end, tradition wasn’t enough to keep college football the way we’d always known it for more than a century. Tradition wasn’t enough to keep players from getting paid or transferring at will or for high school recruiting to fizzle or for conferences to start adding new members that had no geographic or historical relationships with their existing teams.
And if tradition isn’t enough to save the SEC Championship Game, and if the tradition of “going to Atlanta” is passing us by, then tradition certainly shouldn’t be keeping the Pop-Tarts Bowl afloat.
We’ve already made so many radical changes to this sport.
Now it’s time to start making a few that actually make sense.
Tell me how you feel about the new world of college football by writing me at scottdavis@gamecockcentral.com. (Please do not reply to this email.)
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