ATLANTA – Down in these parts, they love to talk about the inspiration of former Southeastern Conference commissioner Roy Kramer, who bucked the trends of college football and created a conference title game in 1992 that in some ways grew to become as big an event as the national championship itself.
For college football’s most storied conference, this game has been everything in the 30-plus years since: A driver of the SEC’s brand, a standalone accomplishment that also defined the postseason whether it was the BCS or College Football Playoff and a carrot for fan bases who have traditionally treated this game almost like a mini-Super Bowl.
“I still remember my senior year of high school playing in the playoffs,” Georgia coach Kirby Smart said this week. “It was a Saturday night game and Alabama was playing Florida in one of the greatest SEC championship games of all time. I remember listening to the radio, hearing the outcome as I was getting ready to play in our game.”
And one day, sometime in the future, there will be another Kirby Smart somewhere out there reminiscing about the good old days when the SEC could fill Mercedes-Benz Stadium.
Because here’s the most interesting thing that happened Saturday as Georgia won a wild 22-19 overtime decision in a game where both teams were playoff-bound no matter what: Despite announcing a crowd of 74,916, the SEC didn’t fill the building – not even close, really.
Even though this venue sits in the middle of a city where millions of Georgia fans live. Even though Texas, after a long buildup to joining the SEC, had a chance to win just its second conference championship in the last 15 years.
A lot of people in those two mega fan bases looked at the opportunity to watch two blueblood college football brands in a great stadium for an allegedly important title and said: “Nah.” How many empty seats were there? Hard to say, but enough to notice – particularly in the upper deck, where there were dozens and dozens of rows that had more unoccupied chairbacks than people.
That’s new for the SEC championship game. And it should be a warning for all of college football. Even in the SEC where “It Just Means More,” fans have decided that conference championships in the 12-team College Football Playoff era mean a whole lot less.
And they’re not wrong.
For better or worse, the sport has changed. Even the SEC isn’t immune. In years past, SEC fans and even administrators would sneer at other conferences that couldn’t fill seats for a championship game. Now, it’s their reality too.
Just look at the Big 12 championship game, where at least 25 percent of the stadium was empty to watch Arizona State and Iowa State. Or the Big Ten championship game in Indianapolis, where you could have gone online Saturday afternoon and scored a ticket in the upper deck for about $30 – largely because Oregon fans weren’t going to travel nearly all the way across the country when their team is in the playoff win or lose.
Even if you thought the SEC wouldn’t feel those same headwinds because of history and geography, Saturday made clear there is a limit to how much greed fans will tolerate and where their priorities now lie.
And it is no longer watching their team try to win a conference championship.
In the SEC championship’s heyday, this game was such a big deal because the winner was almost certainly going to play for the Bowl Championship Series title. There was just one more game after this one, and often the SEC championship was a tougher test.
When college football finally adopted a four-team playoff, it added some stress to fans’ decision-making: Would they lay out their hard-earned money to go to the semifinals or keep their powder dry for the championship? Mostly, though, that didn’t impact the SEC because Atlanta is an easy road trip for most of the league and this game was usually like a play-in for the playoff. It meant a lot.
But now, by expanding the playoff to 12, Texas or Georgia fans have to potentially pay for three road trips to follow their team to a national championship. And not just any road trips: When you factor in flights, meals, jacked-up hotel prices and expensive game tickets, it’s just not financially viable except for the wealthiest families.
It suggests that college football officials, as they evaluate this season, need to think carefully about where conference championship weekend fits in the bigger picture. The 12-team playoff helped make this regular season arguably the most exciting in a generation. But the championship games didn’t have the same urgency, and in Georgia’s case may have been actively harmful. Despite getting a jolt from backup Gunner Stockton in the second half, starting quarterback Carson Beck’s arm injury could have major implications for the Bulldogs’ playoff chances if he isn’t 100 percent in a few weeks.
You can’t expect conferences and television networks to just sacrifice championship games. They are still huge moneymakers, empty seats and all. But they either need to become part of the playoff itself in some way, or they will continue to lessen in cachet as fans, players and coaches focus more on the real postseason.
And college football could help its fans afford to come to these games if it committed to holding the quarterfinals at campus sites rather than handing them over to the traditional bowl games. That would also boost the importance of conference championship games, since the winner would be guaranteed a home game in the quarterfinals.
These are all fixable problems. The 12-team playoff has made college football more relevant than ever at places like Arizona State and SMU that had no real chance of competing for a national title under the old system. When you look at every metric from TV ratings to social media buzz, the sport is on fire.
But there are lessons to learn. And one of them showed up Saturday in Atlanta, where a whole lot of empty seats made a loud statement about how much things have changed – even in the SEC.
