Greg Sankey on potential changes to College Football Playoff structure: 'Allocations have been made'

The future of the College Football Playoff and its format, including qualifications for making the field as well as the future status of automatic bids, remains a highly debated topic among college football’s brass.

As discussions continue, SEC commissioner Greg Sankey provided his thoughts on the current state of the CFP’s structure after meeting with other conference commissioners in Dallas last week.

“I have said repeatedly, that the top ‘fill in the blank’ teams are my personal view and priority. That doesn’t exclude other options, and that’s not what we’ve done in the 12-team playoff,” Sankey told Paul Finebaum during an appearance on his SEC Network show on Monday. “Allocations have been made. Allocations to bring teams forward into the top four that then impact the ability of a school to be in the top four, displace them into hosting, or a school that might host, moves into traveling. We saw that last year and our own league.

“So I think we need to understand allocations have been made. I am asked within our own league, are there other opportunities for allocations? I haven’t used the word automatic bid, and that’s not actually what we have right now. We have conference champion access for the four most highly rated conference champions. My advocacy was no concessions and no assurances in that process, but to have the opportunity to expand the playoff, that wasn’t going to take place.”

During last week’s meetings, conference commissioners discussed multiple modified CFP models, including potential 12-team, 14-team and 16-team formats, but no decisions were officially made for 2025 or 2026.

However, those in attendance ultimately decided more information was necessary before making a decision. The next College Football Playoff meeting is set for later this month.

As the next meeting looms, Sankey provided some additional insight on what may be the next step for the CFP’s decision-makers in modifying the current format.

“I think we have to go into a CFP meeting with our colleagues and explain our issues, just like we have to learn from their issues, their concerns, their perspectives,” Sankey said. “Now, we had athletics directors that expressed opinions, and I respect their right to do so when those became very much the focus.

“I think we should probably slow down a little bit in jumping to conclusions because there’s a lot of work to do in a short period of time.”