Stephen A. Smith responds to Kirby Smart's SEC separation talk

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SEC meetings have taken place this week in Destin, Florida and a number of topics have taken the sports world by storm, from shots fired at other teams in other conferences to the future of college football. One of the bigger comments came from Georgia Bulldogs coach Kirby Smart.

"I’ve said this for a long time to our president, I’ve been a huge advocate that if we can’t find rules that everybody plays by, then we should play on our own,” Smart told reporters. “I’m not afraid of that. I’m not afraid to break away and say that our conference is strong enough to go out and play."

Smart isn't coming to that conclusion without reason. He, along with a number of coaches, is frustrated with the lack of rules and enforcement that's governing the sport. The inability for the leagues and the NCAA to come to a consensus on national standards that govern the sport has made it significantly more challenging for programs.

It's not a controversial take in SEC circles. The conference holds a ton of value on its own. That's part of the reason they moved to nine conference games, because it meant more money for the conference's teams. Imagine what a 10, 11, or 12 game conference schedule plus an SEC only playoff would bring.

ESPN would be champing at the bit to put something like that on their airwaves.

But ESPN's Stephen A. Smith doesn't believe that's the best way forward for the sport.

"You ain't even the No. 1 conference in college football anymore," Smith started. "Let's get that out of the way first. But secondly and more importantly, when you make a statement like that, it's like you just want to operate independently of everybody else. You basically want to establish not only your own conference, your own d— league. In other words, 'there's college football, and then there's us.' As if you don't need to compete against anybody else to be legitamized as a champion. That kind of attitude is something that we should be concerned about."

Smith went on to say, "The SEC is obviously very significant. It's not everything, it's not all of college football. When you look at the college football landscape, you want to see the best across the country competing against one another and deciding and defining who is the creme de la creme, who is that elite team."

Prior to the Bowl Championship Series, which was established in 1998 to pit the No. 1 and No. 2 team in the nation against each other in a national championship game, teams played their conference schedules and those that qualified played in the bowls. After all the bowl games were played, the coaches poll, AP Poll, and others voted on the national champion.

If the SEC were to breakaway from the rest of the FBS, it's hard to imagine that the Big Ten wouldn't ultimately do the same. And if that were the case, the ACC and the Big 12, or whatever would be left of them, would also remain independent and crown their own conference champion. Then we'd be back in the pre-BCS era of having the voters of the major polls determine that year's national champion.

College football worked for a long time without a national championship game or the College Football Playoff. So while Smart's comments may sound extreme, it could be just what the sport needs to reset from the chaos that's plagued the game in recent years.

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This article originally appeared on Sooners Wire: Stephen A. Smith doesn't share Kirby Smart's opinion on future of SEC

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