By Brett Daniels
According to a report by ESPN’s Heather Dinich, the Big Ten/SEC Advisory Council made up of the commissioners, university presidents, and athletic directors of the respective conferences will meet in Nashville this week to discuss the coming contract renewal of the College Football Playoff after the 2026 season. Topics will also include a scheduling agreement between the two conferences. The two conferences are reportedly seeking a total of eight automatic bids (four per conference) to the new College Football Playoff format that could stay at the current 12 or expand to as many as 16 teams with the new agreement. The conferences are also allegedly seeking to alter or eliminate the 13-member selection committee.
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This is a dangerous and potentially seismic move that will trigger another round of conference realignment. If the Big 10 and SEC are successful in gaining eight automatic bids to the CFB Playoff regardless of the total number of teams, this limits the opportunities of teams from the Big 12, ACC, Group of 5, Notre Dame, and potentially the Pac 12 should the conference succeed in reconstituting. The scheduling agreement would also lock out other conferences from scheduling out of conference games against teams from the Big 10 and SEC which would lead to a loss of revenue on the TV side as well as a lack of comparison when it comes time to select the teams for the Playoff.
One of the few good things that could come from this agreement is uniform regulation on NIL/player compensation and the transfer portal instead of the Wild West framework that we have now. The biggest hurdle to this is how the players themselves will be represented in the negotiations. A players’ union and collectively bargained payment and transfer rules appear to be the only way to make this work across all of college sports. The day is coming sooner than later when athletic departments separate themselves from the university and license the trademarks/logos of the respective schools and operate as independent entities. This will mark the end of college athletics as we know it and usher in a paid minor league system for the NFL, NBA, and WNBA.
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College athletics began as “let’s see if the players at our school can beat the players at your school” and then evolved into “come to our school to play sports, we’ll give you a scholarship and you can get a free education” to “who will pay me the most money to play for their school.” College Football is taking a huge risk with the current climate and where the sport is projected to go. People are fans of the college game because it isn’t the NFL. Fans root for the name on the front of the jersey and not the name on the back. Most have an allegiance to their school as a student or alumni, a parent or grandparent attended and passed the tradition down, or people who just grew up rooting for their hometown or home state school and because of all this College Football and the people who run it are risking alienating their fan base.
The current format of the College Football Playoff has taken the shine off many regular season games already. The Alabama–Georgia barn burner on Saturday could be the first of three potential games the teams play this season. Why should any team have to beat another team three times to win a championship? Ole Miss losing to Kentucky on Saturday should have ended their chance to win a national championship – or at least made it much more difficult. Likewise, Notre Dame losing at home to Northern Illinois should have ended the Irish’s opportunity to be in the mix for a national championship, but due to the current (and future) set up of the College Football Playoff system both teams are still very much alive. The beauty of the college football regular season was that a Week 2 match up against Northern Illinois mattered as much as a Week 10 match up against Alabama or Michigan. Now every team gets a mulligan. If the automatic bids for these conferences go through, teams from the SEC and Big 10 will get multiple mulligans and still be able to make the Playoff field.
