Kirby Smart played a significant part in putting and keeping the SEC at the top of the college football pecking order.

Between his time at Alabama and Georgia, Smart was a part of six national championship teams from 2009 through 2022. The last two came in his time leading Georgia.

Yet Smart is well aware that the Big Ten has won the last three national championships, with Michigan, Ohio State and Indiana all taking home the prize that Georgia strives for. Add in that the Big Ten just had more first-round draft picks than the SEC — by a 10 to 7 margin — and even a staunch SEC supporter like Smart sees that the Big Ten is on top at the moment.

“I don’t know that right now you’ve got a lot of merit to stand on when it comes to the championships they’ve been able to win,” Smart said when asked on the Paul Finebaum show if SEC was the best conference in college football. “Kudos to those three teams. Those are three really good teams, really good quarterbacks.”

The SEC did top the Big Ten in terms of total draft picks, with the SEC putting out 87 compared to the Big Ten’s 68. But Ohio State once again led all schools in draft picks with 11.

Indiana and Penn State each finished with eight draft selections, the same as Georgia.

While it was a down year for Georgia in terms of both draft picks and first-round draft picks, Smart still sees the talent spreading out across college football. His Georgia program is not immune to that.

“I think it’s the body of work of the draft,” Smart said. “You look at it and say, OK, our conference still puts out more National Football League prospects, maybe not at the top of the draft this year, but there’s been an evening out of things. I think that’s obvious, and I think it’s good for college football. I think it’s good when you have others.”

As for why the Big Ten has surpassed the SEC, Smart doesn’t dabble in the same theories that some of his fellow SEC coaches do.

In his mind, the teams that play the best at the end of the season usually go on to win the national championship. With how Ohio State and Indiana have looked in the two versions of a 12-team College Football Playoff, it’s hard to argue with that logic.

Georgia has won the SEC in back-to-back seasons, but has yet to find that same level of College Football Playoff success. Smart is well aware of Georgia’s College Football Playoff shortcomings, as he joked with Finebaum that it seems all Georgia can do is win the SEC at this point.

Something he knows is no longer good enough in this day and age to ensure a happy fan base.

“Apparently all we can do is win the SEC championship right now, so that’s not good enough, but you know those are good teams,” Smart said. “We got beat by the team that we beat. It’s hard to beat a good team twice. They beat us, and Notre Dame was a really good team. I got a lot of respect for them, so we did not play well, and that falls on me.”

Georgia’s 2025 season did come to an end after losing to Ole Miss in the College Football Playoff.

Smart’s 2022 Georgia team was not only the last SEC team to win a national championship, it was the last one to play for one as well.

Georgia will once again be one of the top contenders in the sport in 2026. CBS Sports has the Bulldogs ranked as the No. 4 team in the country in its post-spring rankings.

But just ahead of the Bulldogs are two Big Ten powers in Ohio State and Oregon, who are among the schools that will look to win a fourth straight title for their conference.

“I can’t put a finger on why it’s gone that way, or some of the teams in our conference have not been dominant in the playoffs,” Smart said.