Oh, if every day could be Thanksgiving when you need to drive through Atlanta. The turkey population would take a serious hit, but if you must go through I-75 or 85 or 285, a holiday is the best time. Alas, this Friday’s ride to Snellville will not be one of them. National Pie Day or Eat a Red Apple Day will not keep people at home.

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How do you get that job on the Georgia football sideline pulling on Kirby Smart? Wonder if there’s any temptation – or purely by accident – of giving him a wedgie?

Hey, Smart’s the first Bulldog football coach ever to be younger than me. So that’s what I’m going to say leading into Saturday’s Southeastern Conference championship game.

Plus a few other things surrounding college sports.

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Why was half the Alabama Crimson Tide basketball team walking towards the locker room right in the middle of its game Saturday with Minnesota in Brooklyn?

Duh, because the Iron Bowl’s on. And there were others soon to follow.

“That’s my fifth foul, right? I can go on to the back? Guys, wait up!”

“Ouch, turned my ankle. Guess I can’t play anymore. Off to the training room, with a TV, right?”

•••

The SEC fined the Auburn football program $250,000 for beating No. 1 Alabama in the Iron Bowl.

Seriously, you get penalized in the pocketbook for beating the league’s favorite team? That’s the kind of thinking that nearly leveled the Big 12 Conference, the Texas Longhorns getting all the perks.

No, no, no. The fine wasn’t for spoiling a Smart vs. Saban title game in Atlanta this weekend. It was because fans weren’t prevented from storming onto the Jordan-Hare Stadium field after the game Saturday. The SEC released information that this is Auburn’s third such violation of the access to competition area policy, the first one being – guess what – beating the Crimson Tide on a ‘kick-six’ touchdown in 2013.

The $250K is the maximum for a third offense, and in case nobody told Tiger fans, this policy’s been around since 2004. Think we can blame South Carolina for it and how Gamecock fans reacted after games vs. Clemson.

•••

The University of Arkansas is rumored to be looking at Auburn’s Gus Malzahn as its new head football coach. But they are also looking for a new full time athletic director in Fayetteville.

I have a great idea for the AD position. He’s not doing very well at his current job as a general manager in the National Football League. But he is a Razorback alumnus: Jerry Jones. He could make a great offer to Malzahn.

•••

You know, the Georgia Dome was an imposing $200 million stadium, not a sandcastle. But it was brought down just as easily as if a building competition on the beach was over.

But when it was still standing next to the new castle, Mercedes-Benz Stadium, the Dome looked like a sand dollar.

•••

It’s a lower profile coaching move in college ball, but Georgia Southern also decided to make a change at the top during the current season. It’s no myth how important this program is in Statesboro. My own nephew, whom I have mentioned before, enrolled there four years ago as a Red & Black Bulldog but graduated this year a True Blue Eagle. What triggered the change? He cited making the trip to Georgia Southern’s first bowl game in Mobile, Ala, after the 2015 season.

If you are a major fan of the Eagles, you know what kind of transition it’s been over these last five years. The legacy of six NCAA I-AA national championship seasons is a closed chapter. Now it’s trying to take the Sun Belt Conference championship. The only way to get into the Bowl Subdivision College Football Playoff from there is to hope it expands to 16 teams where every conference champion will get a bid.

A reality of being in a mid-major football conference is that if you show any smidgen of success, your coach is snatched away by a Power 5 team (Memphis, Cincinnati and soon Central Florida know what that’s like).

Georgia Southern had a chance to reverse the role, but is instead going to stick with their interim coach, Chad Lunsford. At this time of year, three or four hirings/firings can happen in the time it takes for a red light to turn green in Moultrie.

Earlier on Monday, the day Lunsford earned the full-time Eagles job, it also came out that the school planned on interviewing multiple candidates this week. It’s a story, though, you can’t find online anymore.

In another part of Georgia, Kennesaw State is in the FCS playoffs, and that’s under former Paul Johnson assistant Brian Bohanan. It’s like how Bill Curry got the foundation going at Georgia State to where it’s gone to a couple of bowls representing the Sun Belt, and Bobby Lamb creating the Mercer Bears and for some reason signing to play at Alabama.

Bohanan was going to be interviewed by the Eagles, according to those now missing news reports.

•••

Speaking of the CFP, to anyone who does want to see it expand, something is going to have to give in order to gain that.

The FCS has had its playoff forever. It’s meant 15 games for teams like the Eagles in a season, as many have pointed out as a reason the big leagues should do a big playoff.

But no other NCAA division – all with playoffs – has conference championship games. Georgia Southern was in the Southern Conference and won the league, but never in a title game.

With the 10-team Big 12 now staging a championship game, every FBS conference but the Sun Belt has one. There’s nine of them this weekend. It seemed to me that these 14-team conferences – including the Southeastern and Atlantic Coast – about need a multi-tier playoff themselves.

But you obviously can’t have both, long conference and long national playoff. Or even a short conference and long national. Or short conference and short national … wait, that’s what we do have both of. Just flip the second one.

And you might not get to have Alabama-Mercer anymore.