Cutting through the noise in the College Football Playoff debate

In an "only in college football" move, this sport is guaranteed to have four playoff formats in a 4-year span. The 2023 season was the last of the 4-team bracket. 2024 was the first of a 12-team bracket, with first-round byes reserved for the four highest-ranked conference champions. One look at that prompted a change to a straight seeding format for 2025. And that brings us to 2026, where the bracket is still undecided but the shape of the fight around how to form the bracket has now taken shape.

Here are the major topics and the issues deciding them. 

What are the options on the table? As of now, there are two. The 12-team bracket seems short-lived. A 14-team model was the most popular back in the winter, but as summer arrived all momentum now points towards a 16-team format. Why? It's simple: self interest. Two more bids are two more happy coaches, ADs, and fan bases that get to celebrate a trip to college football's Big Dance.

How will the bracket look? That's the billion-dollar question. The Big Ten has proposed a 4+4+2+2+1 format -- rolls off the tongue, doesn't it? -- that would reserve four spots apiece for the B1G and SEC, two for the ACC and Big 12, one for the highest-rated Group of 5 champion, with the remaining spots (either one or three, depending on the total number) reserved for at-larges. Notre Dame could also earn a guaranteed berth if ranked at a certain threshold.

Best I can tell, the only other championship format that reserves multiple automatic bids to a certain conference or division is the Champions League of European soccer, which is an apt analogy to what college football is attempting to become. The NFC East certainly doesn't get more playoff bids than the NFC South. But that's kind of the argument here. Of course, there is another option on the table, and we'll get to it in a minute. 

Why is the Big Ten pushing this? Dating back to the formation of the Big Ten Network, and arguably even before that, with its growth to 11 by adding Penn State in the early 1990s, no conference has been more obsessed with maximizing revenue through television than the Big Ten. One might think that issue culminated by its most recent (and final?) expansion, resulting in a ridiculous map stretching from New Jersey to Los Angeles, with 16 stops in between. 

But, no. We're not done. The B1G hired a former TV executive named Tony Petitti as its commissioner, and he's devised a plan to stage play-in games to determine his conference's four auto-bids. First and second place would play each other for the right to hoist the trophy as conference champion (and one or two byes in the tournament), while third and sixth place would play for the Big Ten's No. 3 seed and fourth and fifth place would play for the No. 4 seed. Apparently, Petitti and the Big Ten believe the nation clamors to see 8-4 Iowa (the B1G's sixth-place team in 2024) compete for a national championship.

Why is the SEC on board? This is where things get really interesting. In a media availability at his conference's league meetings on Monday evening, SEC commissioner Greg Sankey laid out his conference's position. Sankey said the SEC is "interested, not committed" to the 4+4+2+2+1 format. There's also another option on the table, a 5+11 format identical to the current one where the five conference champs are granted automatic tickets and the remaining field is reserved for at-larges. Sankey also said the 4+ format (I'm not typing all those numbers out again) could actually cost his conference bids.

“If you actually go back and do the research, that kind of format could cost us positions depending on the number of teams,” Sankey said. “I don’t see the critics actually digging in to understand that reality. I don’t see the critics actually analyzing like I’ve just described, how schedules are evaluated. So the critics can run to the microphones and share their opinions. We’re trying to find a format to determine, whatever number it is, the best teams in college football.”

Again, why? Why posture in favor of a format that no one's asking for, that you know the public would largely hate, that would end up costing your conference bids in the long run? A few more Sankey quotes offer breadcrumbs explaining why.

I think On3's Andy Staples got it right when he read between the lines to deduct Sankey's true message: the SEC is using the 4+ and the 5+11 models to tell the rest of college football to pick their poison.

-- In a 4+ model, the SEC will continue scheduling marquee non-conference games like Texas-Ohio State and Georgia-Clemson, and add a ninth conference game. In a world where losses aren't punished so severely, the conference would schedule accordingly. December and January may be worse (or at least more convoluted), but in turn September, October and November would be more eventful.

-- In a 5+11 model, the SEC would do everything in its power to avoid regular season losses at all costs. Its teams would schedule FCS opponents as often as possible, remain at eight conference games, and do everything in its power to produce as many 11-1 and 10-2 squads as mathematics allows. December and January would be easier to understand, at the cost of making September, October and November more dull.

One could call that stance soft. It's also pragmatic. Like it or not, the SEC looked at the recruiting rankings and hypothetical Vegas lines and got mad as hell that 11-2 SMU made the 2024 CFP over 9-3 Alabama. 

Sankey and the SEC have been consistent that they're not beholden to any format. He noted Monday that his conference would've occupied half the field in a 4-team bracket; eventual champion Ohio State, plus the entire ACC, Big 12 and Group of 5 would've all sat at home and watched. 

“Well, in our own room, I’ve had athletic directors tell me directly that we’ve given too much away to arrive at these political compromises,” Sankey said. 

Sankey seems to hold the cards in this monumental game of poker. I don't know how he eventually plays them, but after Monday I think we know which ones he's holding.