MIRAMAR BEACH, Fla. — Georgia coach Kirby Smart endorsed the SEC breaking away from college sports’ current structure to make its own rules, and even hold its own football playoff, if national rules are not adopted to the conference’s satisfaction.Smart was echoing comments made last week by Georgia president Jere Morehead, who called the House v. NCAA settlement a failure and told The Athletic that an SEC-only playoff would be “fantastic.”That may not be feasible anytime soon, given that the College Football Playoff contract runs through the 2031-32 season. But Smart, whose team won the national championship after the 2021 and 2022 seasons, joined Morehead in thinking the SEC could stand on its own, if it came to that.“I’ve been a huge advocate that we can’t find rules that everybody played by, then we should play by our own. I’m not afraid of that,” Smart said Tuesday during the first day of SEC spring meetings. “I’m not afraid to break away and say that our conference is strong enough to go out and have and play — I mean, like, 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.”
Georgia’s Kirby Smart says he’d support SEC breakaway to ‘play … by our own rules’
Smart echoed comments made last week by Georgia president Jere Morehead, who called the House v. NCAA settlement a failure.













