The SEC helped rearrange conference alignment in a blow to the 12-team playoff’s vision. Now, it’s time for SEC boss Greg Sankey to slurp what he helped crumble.
Removing byes for conference champions would help SEC and Big Ten, but other conferences could throw up a short-term road block.
12-team CFP bracket format could stay the same for 2025 season, even though SEC hungry for change.
Or, what about this one? Self-made problems become the toughest to solve.
Sankey wants to reconfigure the 12-team College Football Playoff, which he helped create, after just one season.
Sankey’s modification wish list includes stripping away protection of first-round playoff byes for conference champions.
In such a universe, first-round byes would go to the top four teams in the final College Football Playoff committee rankings, with no built-in protections for conference champions. In theory, then, all four byes could go to teams from the same conference – say, Sankey’s SEC.
Sankey says this change became necessary because conference affiliation no longer looks how it did when commissioners, including Sankey, devised the 12-team playoff format.
Hmm, I wonder why conference alignment changed.
Ah, yes, it changed after Sankey steered the SEC’s plunder of Texas and Oklahoma, the Big 12’s top brands. The SEC’s heist started the realignment carousel’s ignition, and then the Big Ten sprang into action and raided the west coast. In turn, the Big 12 and ACC shopped the Pac-12’s discount rack, and that conference became an unrecognizable husk.
“It’s not the same reality that existed when the 12-team model developed, and I’ve opined what I believe is the need to adjust,” Sankey said on “The Paul Finebaum Show” last week.
“And, the seeding issues, particularly moving teams into the top four, need to be looked at deeply.”
Let’s not forget, Sankey already engineered a change to the 12-team playoff before its launch. Originally, the playoff had been devised for six automatic bids and six at-large bids. After the Pac-12 buckled, Sankey successfully spearheaded the switch to five automatic bids and seven at-large berths.
His latest effort to bend the bracket to the SEC’s desires encounters a roadblock, though.
Changing the playoff before next season would require unanimous approval from the other conference commissioners, plus Notre Dame. Sankey knows he’s unlikely to gain the full support necessary to trigger a change. Commissioners from leagues like the Big 12, Mountain West and ACC have little incentive to give up byes for conference champions.
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The first-round bye carries more value than bracket positioning. It also triggers additional financial compensation to the league represented in the quarterfinals.
Conference commissioners aren’t in the business of turning down paydays.
“I do not have the appetite to give up any financial reward that comes with a bye,” Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark recently told Yahoo! Sports.
As ACC commissioner Jim Phillips told Yahoo! Sports, earmarking byes for conference champions is “not some exotic structure.”
Indeed, a professional league might call that common sense.
If at-large playoff qualifiers become eligible for byes, college football would become America’s only sport in which a team could finish fourth in its conference standings and earn a playoff bye.
The commissioners reportedly will meet in Dallas later this month to discuss the playoff’s future. If even one rival conference commissioner tells Sankey, “No thanks, bucko. We like the playoff as is,” the format will remain the same next season.
In other words, grab a straw, SEC.
You too, Big Ten.
Those “Super Two” conferences puffed up during realignment by weakening other conferences, but now it’s time to grab a straw and slurp what they crumbled – for one more year, anyway.
SEC, Big Ten will get their way, but question is how soon?
Impeding the “Super Two” in their playoff revision would be a short-lived roadblock to the playoff becoming a de facto SEC-Big Ten Invitational. Starting with the 2026 season, unanimous commissioner approval no longer will be required to change the format. At that time, the SEC and Big Ten gain additional authority over the bracket. Hard to imagine that’ll be good for the ‘little guy’ conferences.
So, changes very likely are coming, but why should rival commissioners capitalate to Sankey and Tony Petitti, Sankey’s Big Ten cohort, any sooner than required?
If teams were seeded based off ranking this past season, Big Ten and SEC teams would have seized all the byes.
I don’t fault the SEC for snapping up Texas and Oklahoma and triggering realignment, and Sankey’s just doing his job by seeking an avenue to more byes for SEC teams. The SEC endured two consecutive seasons without advancing a team to the national championship game, so the conference could use a boost. But, the Big 12, ACC and others have no reason to fork it over.
Yormark and Phillips would be doing their jobs by telling Sankey to spend the next year slurping up the beautiful 12-team playoff vision that he helped crumble into realignment soup.
Blake Toppmeyer is the USA TODAY Network’s national college football columnist. Email him at BToppmeyer@gannett.com and follow him on X @btoppmeyer. Subscribe to read all of his columns.