Morning, y’all!
We’ve got some pretty big news to get into today. We all knew this was coming, but it’s still crazy that it’s officially coming to pass.
I promise we’ll take a deeper look at Missouri soon, but with such a huge shift in the college football world confirmed, I wanted to make sure we cover that in full.
The College Football Playoff will expand to 24 teams in 2027 and the SEC championship game will be eliminated.
Whew.
Let’s get into it:
The College Football Playoff field is getting even bigger next season, as ESPN’s Heather Dinich announced the College Football Playoff will expand to 24 teams starting next season.
The new deal between ESPN and the College Football Playoff will go for five seasons and will pay out nearly $1.7 billion.
The expanded field will be comprised of the four Power 4 conference champions, the highest-ranked Group of 6 team and 19 at-large bids.
Selection Sunday for the 2027 season will be on Nov. 28, 2027, with the first round of games between the teams seeded No. 9 through 24 beginning in the second weekend of December.
The college football season will now begin the week before Labor Day, which has traditionally been Week Zero.
With the schedule being moved up, conference championship games will no longer be played. The SEC championship game this year is set to be played on Dec. 5 in Atlanta. Georgia has won the last two SEC championships and is currently in first place in this year’s SEC standings.
Per Dinich’s report, ESPN is set to get back $140 million from the cancellation of the SEC, ACC and Big 12 championship games. The new CFP field will see ESPN pay out an additional $345 million a year to offset the cancellation of those games.
Teams seeded one through eight will get a first-round bye in the CFP. The round of 16 games will be played on college campuses, with the quarterfinals and semifinals still being played at neutral sites.
Read Connor Riley’s full story here.
Smart, Georgia players sound off on end of SEC championship game
Dontrell Glover had perhaps the most perfect summation about how Georgia feels about the big news regarding the SEC championship game.
“The SEC Championship Game is a big game for me,” the second-year offensive lineman said on Monday. “But we’re focused on Mizzou right now.”
Glover is an Atlanta area native and was a starter on last year’s SEC championship-winning team.
That 2025 Georgia squad will go down as the penultimate winner of the SEC championship game.
“The SEC Football Championship Game has been a defining event in college football for more than three decades, producing unforgettable moments and crowning legendary champions,” SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey said in a statement put out by the league. “What began with the vision and leadership of Commissioner Roy Kramer in 1992 helped reshape the landscape of college football and established a tradition that has endured for 35 years.
“As the sport evolves with an expanded College Football Playoff, we look forward to celebrating the remarkable legacy of this event with its 35th and final edition and recognizing the city of Atlanta, Mercedes-Benz Stadium and AMB Sports and Entertainment, and the many partners who have contributed to its success.”
This year’s participants for the game have not yet been decided, though there are multiple scenarios where Georgia can clinch a spot as early as this weekend.
Georgia has won the SEC championship game four times under Kirby Smart, including each of the previous two seasons. The Bulldogs have appeared in five straight SEC championship games.
If the Bulldogs were to make it to Atlanta this year, it would set a league record for most consecutive SEC championship game appearances. Florida played in the first five SEC championship games from 1992 through 96.
“To be honest, it would just mean that we did our job, you know what I mean? We’ve got two more games to get there, so that means that we had a successful game this week, hopefully a successful game this weekend, the week after that,” Georgia safety Khalil Barnes said. “But we can’t really focus on that right now because the SEC is so competitive. If we mess around and think about that, we won’t even be in that game. So we’ve just gotta keep taking care of business one week at a time.”
Read Connor’s full story here.
With the news that this will be the final SEC Championship game, let’s look back at some of our title game photos from the Smart era:
Trivia time
How many consecutive times has Georgia beaten Missouri?
Smart challenges Georgia fans to be loud in Sanford Stadium
Georgia will have its final home SEC game of the season this weekend.
And Smart hopes his fans show up ready to make a difference.
“I’m just trying to encourage them, period, because it needs to be impactful when we play at home,” Smart said. “It needs to be hard to play here. I thought the Oklahoma atmosphere was close to that. I think when you look across the board, and you talk to your peers and opponents in the league, you want to be one of the hardest places to play.”
Georgia did lose the last time it played at home, falling 27-24 to Auburn. The Bulldogs were also the No. 1 team in the country for that game as well.
Read Connor’s story on the rest of Smart’s comments from Monday’s news conference here.
Elite 5-star OT Mark Matthews has committed to Georgia football
The Georgia football program had an awesome weekend in Oxford, throttling Ole Miss by a 42-7 margin.
The Dawgs apparently did just as well on the recruiting trail. Word broke today that 5-star offensive tackle Mark Matthews has quickly committed to Georgia. Matthews had just decomitted from Texas A&M on Sunday afternoon.
Matthews, who plays at St. Thomas Aquinas in Florida, is the nation’s No. 1 offensive tackle and the No. 3 overall prospect for 2027 on the 247Sports Composite.
The instant reaction was that Matthews was likely headed to Miami. As it unfolded, his interest in Georgia triggered the decommitment. Not the Hurricanes.
That’s gigantic news on the recruiting trail, tracking a late, way-under-the-radar close on a senior prospect who will sign next month.
For starters, he now projects as the highest-rated offensive tackle prospect Georgia will have signed since Smart became head coach.
That’s a higher prospect evaluation than luminaries such as Amarius Mims, Broderick Jones, current freshman OT Ekene Ogboko and Andrew Thomas, among others.
Matthews now becomes the third 5-star recruit in the 2027 UGA class. He also now surpasses 5-star RB Kemon Spell to become the highest-rated recruit in this UGA class.
Georgia now has a trio of 5-star commitments in its 2027 class. That bumps the Dawgs from No. 10 to No. 5 nationally in the 247Sports Team Recruiting rankings for this cycle.
The Dawgs are now up to No. 10 nationally for the Rivals Industry Team Rankings.
Read Jeff Sentell’s full story here.
Trivia answer
10
