Georgia AD Josh Brooks on SEC championship game future, play-in games

Georgia football has reached the SEC Championship game in each of Josh Brooks’ five years as athletic director, including winning it in 2024 and 2025.

Yet if the College Football Playoff expands to 16 or 24 teams, Brooks sees the possibility of the SEC Championship weekend either going away or looking quite different.

That follows Alabama athletic director Greg Byrne telling USA Today on April 2 that “the ship has sailed” and “run its course” in regards to the conference title game.

“I think you’re heading down a pathway where that game becomes not only a challenge from a standpoint of does it make sense for the 1 and 2 to play each other, but just getting in logistically if we need more weekends available to fulfill the playoff schedule,” Brooks said on Tuesday, April 14, on Atlanta’s 680 The Fan. “That decision may get decided itself because of the nature of where this thing is headed. Especially if we go up to 24.”

There was discussion in the last year of making that weekend a play-in game of sorts.

Brooks backs that idea.

“If you were 16 teams, you would hopefully assume the top four SEC teams are probably in that mix, right, and we maybe still keep the SEC weekend important,” said Brooks, who heads a calendar subgroup of the Football Bowl Subdivision Oversight Committee. “I would be in favor of maybe the fifth ranked SEC team playing the eighth ranked team, the six playing seven. That way five through eight get datapoints to show (the CFP selection committee). We saw a little of that bubbling up last year when there were rumors of Vanderbilt playing someone else to bolster their resume.”

Brooks said those two games involving teams five through eight would provide television viewership.

Georgia coach Kirby Smart told ESPN’s Chris Low if the playoff goes to 16 or 24 then the SEC championship game “probably has to go,” if the end of the season has to move up and if the playoff has to be done by the second week of January.

“The important thing is we need to gain something, meaning we’re playing that weekend in the first round of the playoff when the SEC Championship game is normally being played and playing the season out like an NFL playoff system,” Smart said. “But if we’re going to leave it where it is now, with 12 teams in the playoff, I’m not for removing the SEC Championship game.”

This article originally appeared on Athens Banner-Herald: Georgia AD Josh Brooks said SEC championship future ‘may get decided itself’