Paul Finebaum doubts the leverage of leagues outside of SEC, Big Ten in CFP negotiations
If it feels like the rest of the conferences don’t have much say in the recent news about the College Football Playoff, Paul Finebaum said it’s because they don’t really.
Finebaum spoke with Greg McElroy on ‘Always College Football’ on Wednesday about the expansion talks for the CFP led by the SEC and the Big Ten. That included the roles of the ACC, Big 12, and Group of Five in all of this, which Finebaum thinks isn’t much with how little resistance they can put up together to those other two conferences.
“Um, I don’t see what leverage they do have, I mean, unless you have a bunch of people at the table who just want to be inclusive of everyone and, quite frankly, I think we’ve past that point,” Finebaum admitted.
The Southeastern Conference and the Big Ten met yesterday in New Orleans to discuss the future of the CFP. While it’s uncertain how it would fully look moving forward, reporting is that the two leagues want more automatic bids as well as straight seeding of the field rather than the awarded byes we saw this past season.
The issue, though, is there does seem to be only so much for the conferences outside of that powerful pair to do. It’s now a matter of if the ACC, Big 12, and G5 want to go along with that or possibly be on the outside altogether in regards to the CFP.
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Finebaum doesn’t think the SEC and Big Ten want to fully take over college football. Still, they apparently can and would if they wanted to with that leaving the other conferences with nothing but a decision to be part of it or not.
“If the SEC and the Big Ten wanted to say we’re done with all of you, they could easily get away with it,” said Finebaum. “I don’t think that’s really their goal.
“I just think there, you know – we’re at a point where, if you don’t want to play along, you probably better take your toy and go home and expect that the G5, Big 12, ACC Shootout is going to draw crickets while the SEC vs. Big Ten is going to be on the two major networks.”