Greg Sankey uses NCAA baseball tournament snubs to make CFP expansion point

College Football Playoff expansion discussion is back, with the SEC Spring Meetings being at the forefront. Commissioner Greg Sankey was answering questions on the topic while in Destin, talking about the pros and cons when comparing an eight and 12-team playoff.

Where conferences from around the country are getting caught up is with automatic bids. Some want the smaller playoff with six qualifiers while Sankey refuses to accept that. He gave an interesting comparison to the recent NCAA baseball tournament when talking about the system. Sankey said there has been an uproar over some bubble teams left on the outside than to automatic qualifiers.

“I’ve been open in public that eight teams without automatic qualifiers is something we have an interest in exploring,” Sankey said. “But that didn’t seem to have the support, the notion that we have to grant automatic bids. So what’s ironic is the day after baseball selection, where people are concerned about really good teams not being selected, we give away a whole lot of automatic bids you wonder about. At some point, there’s a balance here of who wants automatic bids and who doesn’t want it.

North Carolina State could be the recent example Sankey would use in baseball. Although they finished with an ACC record under .500, the Wolfpack ranked No. 33 in RPI. With the field comprising of 64 teams, a true middle-of-the-pack ball club was left out of the NCAA Tournament.

Sankey explained his overall reasoning a little further, saying he would have a problem with the No. 8 team in the country getting replaced by a lower-ranked team. All it would take is a surprise conference championship and somebody completely off the radar would be competing for a national championship.

“In football, we select the four best teams and an eight-team playoff with six AQs — you’re replacing the eighth-best teams with the 20th best team,” Sankey said. “Which would have happened after the ’24 season. I don’t think that playoff is sustainable and that’s not really about protecting our interest. That’s just saying ‘from a college football standpoint, you’re going to put No. 20 in and leave No. 8 home? And you’re going to do that over and over?’ That’s just never seemed to work.”

Greg Sankey explains his ideal playoff system

The 12-team playoff is the way of the future according to Sankey. While he is in favor of automatic bids in this model, he still wants to be vaguer on how they are determined. Sankey thinks it should be the top six conferences on a yearly basis, not predetermined. For example, the Power Five conference plus the American Athletic Conference would be assumed as the top six. Sankey wants to make sure everyone can get involved.

“So we went with 12 and you accommodate the automatic bid opportunities without guaranteeing those by conference,” said Greg Sankey. “I’ll stand up and say I expect that we’ll be at least in the top six conference champions every year. We’re not running from that. I think others are concerned they won’t be in that so they want protection.

Sankey went back to his point about low-ranked teams sneaking in but changed the tone. He said getting No. 20 in there instead of No. 12 felt more right compared to someone inside the top 10.

“I think replacing (No.) 12 with 20, at least you can understand that. 16th and 12,” the SEC commissioner said. “That will be tough but it happens but I never thought you could replace the eighth best team with the 20th best team and that be accepted as the right kind of playoff format.”

There’s a long way to go when it comes to College Football Playoff expansion. ESPN and the length of their television contract control the timeline but Sankey has made the SEC’s stance clear.