Kirby Smart wants to see the College Football Playoff expanded.

Whether or not it moves to a 16-team format — which the SEC has supported — or a 24-team field is not of concern to Smart. He just believes there should be more teams in the field.

“I’ve been very vocal that I support expansion,” Smart said in a recent interview with Paul Finebaum. “To what number, I think depends on, you know, are we going to play conference championship games? Are we going to have television spots that don’t compete against the NFL? But expansion, I think if you polled the SEC, every AD and every head coach would support expansion.”

Georgia has had little issue making the College Football Playoff in recent seasons, as the Bulldogs are the only team in the sport to make the College Football Playoff in four of the previous five seasons. Be it a four-team field or a 12-team field, Georgia has been able to find a way into the College Football Playoff field under Smart.

That isn’t expected to change this upcoming season, where the Bulldogs have one of the top rosters in the sport. Most publications see Georgia as a top 5 team entering next season and it wouldn’t come as a surprise to see Georgia once again in the College Football Playoff.

So why would someone like Smart be in favor of allowing more teams in the College Football Playoff? Expectations don’t change for simply making the College Football Playoff, as Smart well knows and understands.

“Apparently all we can do is win the SEC championship right now, so that’s not good enough,” Smart said in the same interview with Finebaum.

While the College Football Playoff field is changing, so too is the way Georgia recruits. For the first time since 2016, Georgia didn’t sign a top 5 recruiting class in the most recent recruiting cycle.

One of the reasons for the slight drop off — Georgia still signed the No. 6 recruiting class per the 247Sports Composite rankings — is the lack of high-end recruits. Georgia signed just two top 50 prospects in the 247Sports Composite rankings last cycle. That is the fewest ever for a Smart class at Georgia.

In an interview with Josh Pate, Smart acknowledged that an unwillingness to pay top dollar for the very highest-rated recruits is something the Bulldogs are having to combat on the recruiting trail.

“I want you to earn it and work your way up,” Smart said.“People hear it all the time in recruiting, they want to use this as a negative to us.”

Bringing in the best high school talents has been one of the trademarks of Smart’s tenure at Georgia. He’s always believed the sport has been about the Jimmys and Joes, rather than the Xs and Os.

But with a wider College Football Playoff field, the need for the very best talent every season is not what it once was. With a wider College Football Playoff field comes more randomness.

A quarterback getting hot, as Trinidad Chambliss did a season ago for Ole Miss, or a key defensive touchdown can swing a College Football Playoff game and thus the season. Ohio State had 11 NFL draft picks on last year’s roster, yet it met the same fate as Georgia. A loss in its first College Football Playoff game.

It’s clear that last year’s Georgia team had the requisite talent to compete for a national championship, with the Bulldogs having the same number of draft picks as eventual title-winner Indiana. With how well Smart identifies and develops talent, he’s always going to be able to keep Georgia’s roster stocked with the kinds of players who can one day make their way to the NFL.

“Look, we’re going to find the right people,” Smart said to Pate. “We only need to find 25. We need to find 22. And there’s thousands of them good enough out there. Like the difference in the top thousand players... I just need to find 22 that want to be here.”

In a smaller College Football Playoff field, the regular season margin of error is much, much wider. You can afford to lose multiple games, as the Bulldogs did in 2024, and still make the College Football Playoff. Ohio State went 10-2 in 2024 and won the national championship.

Georgia may not hoard talent as it did in the late 2010s and early 2020s. Having the sixth-best roster on an annual basis should get you into the College Football Playoff with a larger field. A decade ago, that would not have been the case.

In the event the College Football Playoff field expands — it seems like a when more than an if at this point — Georgia should still be in good shape in terms of making the College Football Playoff every season. Players like Tyriq Green, Zykie Helton and Khamari Brooks seem to be the kind of players who will outplay their recruiting rankings in the coming years, something Smart has always had an eye for.

It’s still too early to tell if Smart’s current approach to recruiting needs to change as far as spending more on incoming freshmen. Based on how the last two seasons ended, the lack of true freshman difference-makers wasn’t the reason Georgia did not end up winning the national championship. The Bulldogs also signed the No. 1-ranked recruiting class in 2024 and the No. 2 group in 2025 per the 247Sports Composite rankings.

Georgia has shown it’s capable of building a roster that can get into the College Football Playoff. The next step comes with getting that roster to play its best football at the end of the season. Something that has not happened in each of the last two seasons.