College football has never been in a stranger place than it is in the year 2026, and things continue to feel further and further off the rails with each passing day.

With the arrival of SEC Spring Meetings this week in Destin, the hottest topics of the last several months have taken center stage, and though expansion of the College Football Playoff has of course been the main talking point, other more existential issues are present as well.

Things are more divided between major conferences than they have been in some time, and as NCAA rules continue to not be enforced, everyone has an idea as to how things could be solved.

He has said it in the past, but Georgia Bulldogs head coach Kirby Smart proposed the nuclear option of the SEC removing itself from the rest of college football as something that could be legitimately considered.

"I’ve said this for a long time to our president, I’ve been a huge advocate that if we can’t find rules that everybody plays by, then we should play on our own," Smart told reporters in Destin. "I’m not afraid of that. I’m not afraid to break away and say that our conference is strong enough to go out and play. If we could actually function financially, it would make our programs more stable. We could support things financially. I’m talking about all the sports and do our own rules – I’d be all for that."

The idea of self-governance is not exactly a new concept in terms of rules in the transfer portal and NIL being enforced, however it certainly is a whole lot more radical to propose simply playing independently from the rest of the nation.

Smart certainly does not want that to happen in an ideal world, but the world of college sports has not been ideal for some time now.

Ultimately, it still feels a little bit far fetched for the SEC to no longer compete for the same championships as the Big 10, the ACC and the Big 12, however the world we are currently living in felt pretty far fetched not long ago as well.

There has to be a breaking point, and it does seem like college sports may be reaching it sooner rather than later. Whether or not Smart's views are shared by the rest of the conference cannot be known, but something big is likely coming in the near future.