It was a season to remember. The Miami Hurricanes not only made the College Football Playoff for the first time in school history, but were one possession away from winning its first national title in a quarter century. Miami made it all the way to the national championship game as a No. 10 seed before ultimately falling to a juggernaut in No. 1 Indiana. Mario Cristobal's team may have broken the system.
Georgia head coach Kirby Smart had interesting things to say about playoff expansion to Josh Pate.
"I'm not pro 16 or 24, I'm pro more than 12. But what is your stance against the 24? Water it down? Regular season? ... I agree with all those. I just don't know where that line of demarcation is."
He then made it a point to say the case put forth by Miami last year, who was the last team to make it.
"For Miami, who legitimately ... could have won the national championship. They could have won it. They had two losses to teams that are really competitive. They're competitive to them in their conference, but maybe they're better than. They shouldn't lose those games. They had two games they shouldn't lose. And I feel like, for 10 years that I've been here, if you lost two games you shouldn't lose, you're gone, you're out. But they were good enough to win it!"
Smart finished by saying that while UGA is a model of consistency, expansion favors everyone else...
"I think in our model, our program ... we've had a model of consistency. We lose games, but we haven't lost a lot of games we're not supposed to. And so, if you're that kind of program, you want that thing nice and tight. You don't want these outsiders getting in that could get hot. I always told people, some of these teams, they can play with anybody on any given Saturday, but they might not get up for every Saturday."
Here is all that Smart had to say in his one-on-one interview with Pate about more playoff expansion.
I simply refuse to lose Kirby to the CFP Expansion Cult. ROBUST CONVERSATION today... pic.twitter.com/5UBWbNFanR
— Josh Pate (@JoshPateCFB) May 4, 2026
Cristobal may not be satisfied until he wins it all, but a larger playoff field would serve Miami so much.
Kirby Smart's playoff expansion comments should help Miami out a ton
Look. With where Miami is now as a program, and where they have come from under Cristobal, the goal every year now should be to make the playoff. While they should be good enough most years to contend for it, the Canes will have to navigate the complicated nature of the ACC. Georgia plays in the SEC, a league that has averaged four teams in the last two years. The ACC has averaged 1.5 teams...
Had it not been for a perfect storm, there was a halfway decent chance the ACC could have been left out of the playoff entirely. Miami more than made the most of its borderline inclusion. In short, Smart may not have put a number on it, but if more expansion were to happen, let's cap it at 16 teams, please. Everybody gets a first-round opponent. No, the 17th-best team in the nation cannot win it all.
Ultimately, any time there are wholesale changes to the postseason format in college football, there are usually a few teams who played a part in breaking the mold. 2004 Auburn, 2007 Georgia, and 2011 Oklahoma State all played their part in there even being a College Football Playoff. 2023-24 Florida State and 2023-24 Georgia helped us get to 12 teams. Maybe 2025-26 Miami gets us to 16?
Since the playoff is the be-all, end-all in college football today, look for more expansion to be coming.
Add us as a preferred source on Google