Big Ten and SEC officials are scheduled to meet this week for an unprecedented summit of the richest conferences in college sports. Their agenda is stocked with discussion topics that will shape the future of a multi-billion-dollar industry with hundreds of schools and more than 100,000 athletes.
But for all the concentrated power and authority gathering Thursday in Nashville, it’s not the most important meeting of the season.
That comes in two months, on the first weekend of December when the College Football Playoff selection committee congregates outside of Dallas to pick and seed the inaugural 12-team event.
Make no mistake: The meetings are closely related.
If anything, the session this week, which includes commissioners Tony Petitti of the Big Ten and Greg Sankey of the SEC, plus athletic directors from both conferences, will heap pressure on the 12 men and women tasked with picking and seeding the expanded 12-team playoff.
While leaders from both leagues will address a possible scheduling partnership and ways to navigate the settlement of a multi-billion-dollar lawsuit against the NCAA, the hottest issue on the table involves the future of the CFP — specifically, whether the Big Ten and SEC should receive automatic bids to the event when the next contract cycle begins in two years.
Under the format adopted for the 2024 and 2025 seasons, the five highest-ranked conference champions and the seven highest-ranked non-champions will receive bids to the event.
But the CFP hasn’t settled on a format for 2026 and beyond. Every conference will have a voice, but only two truly matter: The Big Ten and SEC, along with ESPN, will dictate the outcome.
One option, initially broached in the spring, would expand the playoff to 14 teams and assign guaranteed bids to the conferences. The Big Ten and SEC would receive at least three bids each regardless of the records and resumes of the top teams, thus codifying a hierarchy within the selection process that does not, to this point, exist.
Why demand a caste system that limits access for the ACC and Big 12? Because the blood runs blue. With so many traditional powers concentrated in the Big Ten and SEC, the quality of play will be higher — and the weekly competition stronger — than anywhere else.
Executives are concerned the CFP selection committee will lean into loss totals, not schedule strength. And it’s a valid concern considering no two-loss team has been invited to the four-team playoff.
Technically, the current selection process includes a metric that accounts for schedule strength. But it was designed for a four-team playoff in the era of five power conferences.
The latest round of realignment, which kneecapped the Pac-12 and engorged the Big Ten and SEC, has changed the nature of weekly competition within those conferences.
Determining the teams worthy of playoff berths is about more than any given team’s hits (the opponents); it’s also about the misses (the teams not on the schedule).
It’s about the number of common opponents, or lack thereof.
It’s about schedules that are front-loaded and those that have punishing finishes.
It’s about the order of games, the placement of byes, the days of preparation and the number of road trips.
Put another way: College football has no equivalent of the NET rankings, the tool used by the NCAA Tournament selection committee to sort through a cluster of teams that appear similar.
With so many blue bloods now jammed into two conferences and an event that’s now three times the size of the original, it makes sense to explore tweaks to the process.
Which brings us to this season — and the immense pressure on the selection committee.
Big Ten and SEC officials will be watching closely. Any sense of disregard for their competitive depth could push officials closer to adopting a format (i.e., guaranteed bids) that shields them from the committee’s whims. (Also possible: elimination of the selection committee altogether.)
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How might a Defcon 1 situation materialize?
What if Tennessee, which just lost to Arkansas, also falls short against Alabama and Georgia, finishes 9-3 and gets left out of the CFP in favor of Clemson, which finishes 11-2 after losing to Miami in the ACC championship game?
That could irk a few folks in the SEC.
To be clear: We aren’t suggesting that scenario will play out — or that the committee would necessarily make the decision to exclude the Volunteers if they have three losses.
But in our view, the general framework applies.
There could be undesirable long-haul consequences if the committee picks two-loss teams from the ACC or Big 12 with modest schedule strength over three-loss teams from the Big Ten and SEC with stout schedules.
If it feels like the committee is operating under threat, well, that’s understandable.
After all, the Big Ten and SEC already used the threat of creating their own playoff as a means of consolidating power over the postseason.
It’s all part of the new world order in which every conference orbits around the Big Two.
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