What the Big Ten, SEC really want in the next version of the College Football Playoff

We’ve reached the public negotiation phase of the next iteration of the College Football Playoff, which may be agreed upon before we even see the first bracket in the most recent iteration of the CFP. Monday, anonymous Big Ten and SEC sources converged to announce their preferences for even more automatic bids for those two leagues — and only those two leagues — in a story from ESPN reporter Heather Dinich.

These details also have trickled out in recent weeks in stories by Yahoo’s Ross Dellenger, and all of the posturing and positioning is happening ahead of a joint meeting of Big Ten and SEC athletic directors next week in Nashville. Why now? Because those leagues need to get on the same page and decide what they’re willing to bend on and what they’ll demand when they meet with the other conferences and Notre Dame to finalize the details of the College Football Playoff for the 2026 season and beyond. They also need to float these trial balloons to see exactly what the college football-loving public will tolerate.

Do they insist on four automatic bids for each of their leagues? Or will they take three if the other leagues are willing to give up something else? Do they want to stay at 12 teams or move to 14? 

The expansion to 14 teams seems the easiest outcome to predict. Though we haven’t actually seen how the runup to the first 12-team College Football Playoff will play out, we can guess that the Big Ten and SEC title games will be somewhat anticlimactic affairs. All the teams involved will want to win, of course. No one will rest their starters. A trophy and a first-round bye will be on the line. But both teams in both games likely will be locks for the 12-team field. That doesn’t exactly create high drama.

That probably won’t be the case in the other leagues, and do-or-die conference title games in the Big 12, ACC and possibly multiple Group of 5 leagues will make those games much more compelling television. 

But if the field expands to 14, the Big Ten and SEC would be in line to receive the only first-round byes in most years. (Or in all years if they negotiate it that way.) This would make those top two spots more valuable, and it would provide more clear stakes for the Big Ten and SEC title games — which are cash cows for the leagues but need to continue to have high enough stakes to convince people to watch. You win, you open in the quarterfinals. You lose, you have to play a losable first-round game.

Whether the byes for the Big Ten and SEC would be codified would be another question. In most years, the Big Ten and SEC champs likely would be the top two seeds in the CFP. But maybe the leagues don’t want to leave it to chance. Remember, it was former Big Ten commissioner Kevin Warren who helped hold up the expansion to 12 by a year in part with his insistence that an automatic bid be guaranteed for the Big Ten champ when he knew the Big Ten champ probably would be one of the four highest seeded teams in almost any year. At the time, SEC commissioner Greg Sankey and then-Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby pushed back on the idea because they feared legal action from other leagues if the power conferences wrote in too many advantages for themselves.

The SEC seems to have relaxed its concerns about challenges from the other leagues, probably because the current version of the College Football Playoff and the one the leagues are negotiating currently gives those leagues more money than anything they possibly could create without the Big Ten and the SEC. The other conferences essentially have no choice but to take the carrot because while the Big Ten and SEC don’t need them, they desperately need the Big Ten and the SEC.

Which brings us to automatic bids. Here’s how a 14-team CFP would look with four automatic bids for the Big Ten and SEC if the leagues continue to agree that the five highest ranked conference champs get automatic bids.

• Four Big Ten teams (including Big Ten champ)
• Four SEC teams (including SEC champ)
• Three other highest ranked conference champs (Can come from any league except the Big Ten and SEC)
• Three at-larges (Can come from anywhere in the FBS, including the Big Ten and SEC)

Now, what if the Big Ten and SEC were willing to bend on this a little? What if they were willing to give up one of those precious automatic bids (that one or two of their teams might be getting anyway if they were at-larges)?

Then the CFP would look like this…

• Three Big Ten teams (including Big Ten champ)
• Three SEC teams (including SEC champ)
• Three other highest ranked conference champs (Can come from any league except the Big Ten and SEC)
• Five at-larges (Can come from anywhere in the FBS, including the Big Ten and SEC)

Either scenario could have double-digit teams from the Big Ten and the SEC, but the Big Ten and SEC give something certain to produce the second one. The question is what they’d ask of the other leagues in return. 

Dinich’s story pondered the possibility of eliminating or severely limiting the selection committee. The Big Ten and SEC might do that by insisting upon four automatic bids each for them while also offering the ACC and Big 12 two automatic bids for themselves. That would cover 12 spots. The highest ranked Group of 5 champ would take another. They could then leave one at-large in case Notre Dame has a good enough record, but that applies the same subjectivity they’re trying to eliminate with that plan.

They could attempt to crowbar Notre Dame football into a conference by adding another automatic bid for the second highest ranked Group of 5 champ, but it’s tough to imagine the Big Ten and SEC playing hardball with Notre Dame, which could be a valuable ally (and a potential down-the-line member). Plus, someone would still have to seed the teams in the bracket. So eliminating the committee isn’t feasible.

The biggest reason the Big Ten and SEC wouldn’t pursue that option is that it eliminates more CFP chances for the Big Ten and SEC. They want the most possible teams in the field, and the other two options outlined above allow for as many as 11 teams from those two leagues in the field.

One possible answer to the question of what the Big Ten and SEC would want from the other leagues is an agreement to alter the seeding to eliminate the requirement that a team be a conference champion to be one of the top four seeds. While we still haven’t seen a 12-team CFP, we’ve constructed enough mock brackets to know that the No. 5 seed might have an easier path than the No. 1 seed if the No. 12 seed is a conference champ that finishes lower than No. 12 in the actual rankings and the No. 4 seed is a conference champ that finishes lower than No. 4 in the actual rankings. Those would be the first two teams the No. 5 seed plays. The No. 1 seed, meanwhile, would face the winner of No. 8 vs. No. 9, and in that scenario No. 8 and No. 9 might actually be the sixth- and seventh-ranked teams overall.

In this week’s Bracketology, I projected No. 12 to be Mountain West champ UNLV and No. 4 to be Big 12 champ BYU. Let’s say the Rebels went 12-1 and won their league. Because of their schedule, they’d probably finish ranked around No. 15. And let’s say the Cougars won the Big 12 but with an 11-2 record. They’d probably wind up ranked somewhere between No. 8 and No. 12, but they’d get elevated to the No. 4 seed. It’s also entirely possible the No. 4 seed is a three-loss team that upset a favorite in its conference title game. That team might be ranked around No. 15, but it would get a bye.

Even before a game gets played in this system, this seems like a glaring flaw. Teams shouldn’t want to be seeded fifth rather than first, but that’s what this system encourages. The other leagues of course want their champions to be seeded as high as possible, but the Big Ten and SEC have good reason to want to avoid deliberate mis-seeding. Their teams are more likely to benefit more often from a system that seeds the teams as they’re ranked.

Given everything that’s happened in the past four years and everything on the horizon, it’s possible we’re going to watch the Big Ten and SEC steamroll their way to whatever they want. They have all the leverage now. But before they settle on their platform for negotiations with the other leagues, they need to see exactly how much you can stomach.