James Franklin believes Big Ten, SEC should have most teams in College Football Playoff yearly

With the College Football Playoff rankings taking center stage during the season half of the season, coaches like Penn State‘s James Franklin are grappling with what the current standings mean for their team.

The Nittany Lions are in pretty good shape, but there are interesting discussions taking place about the overall quality of the Big Ten.

In particular, Indiana‘s schedule has been scrutinized heavily and many are wondering — if the Hoosiers lose to the Ohio State Buckeyes this weekend — whether it should merit inclusion into the College Football Playoffs.

Franklin didn’t weigh in on that, but he did weigh in on the strength of the conference as a whole.

“I’ll say this. Obviously, I’m concerned about Penn State and obviously I’m concerned about the Big Ten,” the long-time Penn State coach said. “But I’m one of the few guys that have been a head coach in both conferences and to me, the right thing to be talking about is the two best conferences in all of college football is the Big Ten and the SEC. And we should have the most teams in. I don’t think there’s any question to that.”

Where Franklin seemed to take issue was the automatic qualifier spot for the fifth-highest-ranked conference champion in the College Football Playoff. In most scenarios that would be a Group of Five team. This year it may include the Big 12.

“I think where it becomes problematic is when you have rules for certain teams and certain conferences to get in and maybe people don’t feel like they’re actually in the top 12,” Franklin said. “So I get it. We’re fortunate. We’re part of the two conferences that I think everybody would agree are the two strongest conferences. I don’t think we need to take shots in the Big Ten at the SEC because that’s been proven over time. And I don’t think the SEC should be taking shots at the Big Ten.

“We’re in a really, really good position, both conferences. I don’t think there’s any argument there, and the reality is whether peoples’ feelings are hurt or not, these two conferences need to have the biggest number and the biggest presence in the playoffs because we’ve earned it throughout the season.”

As for the rest of the fussing over the College Football Playoff and various rankings, Franklin didn’t seem super interested in engaging. Rightfully so, of course, with his team sitting in prime position.

Still, he noted this was a natural outcome of the most recent change in the sport.

“I think it’s interesting because there’s this battle going on in terms of the narrative of college football, of who should be in,” Franklin said. “We’ve talked about this before. It was four (teams) and everybody argued we’ve got to go to 12. We get to 12 and what’s happening? Everybody’s arguing that 14, 15, 16 are getting screwed.

“And we talked about the basketball tournament, how many is that? Sixty-eight, and what happens there? Sixty-nine, 70. So this is part of it.”

The College Football Playoff will officially begin with first-round games starting on Dec. 20.