Greg Sankey addresses College Football Playoff committee discussions on format after further realignment

The ACC officially added three new members on Friday, adding Cal, Stanford and SMU to the mix and keeping the conference realignment carousel spinning. It could also have College Football Playoff implications.

SEC commissioner Greg Sankey explained some of the thinking from the College Football Playoff committee when it comes to the expanded playoff in 2024.

“That’s an important question,” Sankey said on the Paul Finebaum Show. “We talked about format and we’re laser focused on 12 (teams). There’s always going to be different opinions, and we have a short timeframe to move to 12. But facts, circumstances have changed. They’ve changed since Wednesday.”

The changes aren’t likely to impact the size of the playoff. Everyone seems relatively locked in on a 12-team format.

But the makeup of that format is under consideration now. Previously it was anticipated that there would be six bids given to conference champions, then six at-large bids available.

Now, with the consolidation of conferences — and likely elimination of the Pac-12 in reality, if not name — there’s some thought being given toward shrinking the number of conference championship bids to five and going to seven at-large bids.

“I was on your show when we had that long, long, long interview and I observed that, ‘Wow, I think we’re going to have to look at elements of format. Not 12 or not, but within,'” Sankey said. “Some of the learning that we’ve gone through, our staff’s done a great job in evaluating looking back at rankings and if you were a 5-7 kind of format versus 6-6. At 5-7 with the direction we seem to be headed you would have unranked teams in a 12-team playoff, and that just doesn’t work. People have to understand that. We can’t displace the 11th-ranked team in the country for an unranked participant, even though it’s a conference champion. That won’t work. That won’t work for conferences with really high-level football.”

Whatever the committee decides there is likely to be some level of pushback. In a sport with the kind of diversity of programs as college football, it’s almost impossible to please everyone.

Sankey, though, thinks whatever format they settle on will still allow teams a clearer path toward competing for a national title via the College Football Playoff than before.

“We’re still providing access opportunities,” he said. “Anybody can play their way in, either through a conference champion that’s highly ranked or an at-large opportunity. But we’re going to have to work and we’re obviously still interested in what happens out west. I shared before, I’ve spoken with Oregon State, Washington State. They have some decisions to make. There’s still not ultimate clarity, we just took another step down this particular journey.”