Steve Spurrier makes his picks for ACC, SEC Championship games

While Steve Spurrier might be known as a staple of the SEC, the Head Ball Coach knows the ACC just as well given his time as Duke‘s head coach in Durham, North Carolina.

Before becoming head coach at his alma mater, Spurrier directed Duke to a share of the 1989 ACC Championship, the school’s first ACC title of any kind since the mid-1960s, for which he was among those honored during halftime of this season’s Duke-SMU game.

Spurrier utilized that wealth of knowledge about both leagues while evaluating the ACC and SEC championship matchups ahead of Championship Saturday.

Having seen the Mustangs up close, Spurrier is all-in on No. 9 SMU claiming the outright ACC title in its first season in the league with a win over No. 12 Clemson on Saturday evening.

“I think SMU does, I think they’re a little better,” Spurrier said Monday on the Another Dooley Noted Podcast. “But anybody can win, and Clemson is certainly capable of beating them.”

SMU (11-1, 8-0 ACC) enters the game as a slight 2.5-point favorite over the Tigers (9-3, 7-1), which are still reeling from last weekend’s 17-14 home loss to cross-state rival South Carolina.

Of course, Spurrier – the 1966 Heisman Trophy winner at Florida – spent the majority of his career in the SEC, including winning six SEC championships over his 12 seasons in Gainesville (1990-2001).

While not necessarily making an outright pick for Saturday’s SEC Championship game between No. 3 Texas (11-1, 7-1 SEC) and No. 7 Georgia (10-2, 6-2) at 4 pm ET on ABC, Spurrier acknowledged how both head coaches are approaching it with the correct frame of mind.

“Since it’s in Atlanta, I would sort of think that Georgia would get really up for it,” Spurrier said. “But then I heard Coach Sark(isian) say, ‘Hey, if we can win the SEC in our first year ever in the conference, … that’d be something special.’ So, he’s smart enough to say, if we can win the SEC, it’s right there under the national championship. And that’s how I always looked at it.

“Those coaches that said we may not want to play in the conference championship game because someone might get hurt, nah, he didn’t say that. He wasn’t one of those guys.”

Never one to miss an opportunity to take a dig at a Georgia head coach, Spurrier took a not-so-subtle shot at Kirby Smart‘s 2-4 career record in SEC Championship games. Smart is also 2-1 in the College Football Playoff National Championship Game with back-to-back wins in 2022 and 2023.

“Kirby will say the same thing, Kirby will say, ‘We want to win the conference championship,’” Spurrier added. “You know he’s only got two of them in his eight years (at Georgia), and he said it’s just as hard to win the SEC as the national (championship) for him, because he’s 2 and 2.”