Why the Big Ten, SEC need to align for the sake of college football’s future
The College Football Playoff format and conference schedules were a hot topic across NCAA football media days.
College football keeps changing at a rapid pace, yet the top power brokers in the sport are misaligned and seem to be at odds.
The SEC thinks they’re the best conference in the land and SEC commissioner Greg Sankey seems to have an unshakeable bravado. The Big Ten has a big ego, too, and isn’t in the business of making concessions to other conferences. The future of college football runs through both conferences as they carry the most influence, far more than the ACC, Big 12, and beyond.
The SEC and Big Ten are currently butting heads about proposed new formats to the College Football Playoff. The playoff expanded to 12 teams last season, but proposals are already on the table to increase the number to 16. The two conferences have common ground on 16 teams being in the CFP moving forward, but they’re far apart on the formula for selecting those teams.
The SEC favors five conference champions and 11 at-large bids making up the field of 16 while the Big Ten wants four automatic bids for both the Big Ten and SEC, two automatic bids for the ACC and Big 12, and one to the top ranked Group of 5 team, with the rest of the field consisting of at-large teams.
“We had a different view coming out of Destin around the notion of allocations,” Sankey said at SEC Media Day last week. “The Big Ten has a different view. That’s fine. We have a 12-team playoff, five conference champions. That could stay if we can’t agree.”
Petitti said at Big Ten Media Day that the model the SEC favors “will have a difficult time getting support of the Big Ten.”
A major difference — and one that both conferences don’t want to cede ground on — is the amount of conference games they play. The Big Ten plays nine conference games, while the SEC plays eight.
“It is absolutely fully 100 percent correct that in the SEC, we play eight conference games while some others play nine conference games — never been a secret,” Sankey said. “It’s also correct that last season, all 16 members of the Southeastern Conference played at least nine games against what you would label ‘power opponents.’”
Sankey went on to say he doesn’t believe anyone would swap their conference schedule and its opponents with an SEC conference schedule.
Penn State head coach James Franklin may be a voice of reason in the midst of the disagreements. Franklin wants things to be even across the board, with every conference playing the same number of conference games.
“The thing that I struggle with is the same thing I’ve been talking about for a long time, and this doesn’t change. Everybody has to play the same number of conference games. Like, this ain’t that hard, right? Everybody should be playing eight or everybody should be playing nine,” Franklin said.
Sankey said that the SEC will soon decide on an expanded conference schedule for the 2026 season, or if they’ll just stay at eight conference games. However, the push for uniformity seems to be growing and the Big Ten seems to be getting louder in their critiques of the SEC.
“Until there’s continuity between conferences, if you’re in the Big Ten, it would make no sense to have anything other than a case to have four automatic qualifiers and an expanded pool of teams,” Ohio State head coach Ryan Day said. “Because when you play nine conference games, it’s not the same as someone who plays eight conference games. If you’re going to be compared against that, it’s just not the same.”
When it comes to a subjective process by a College Football Playoff Selection Committee concerning who does and doesn’t make the playoffs as at-large bids, it seems like common sense to make it easier to compare one conference and its programs to another. Where it gets dicey is when one conference plays a different number of conference opponents than another.
“You’re asking a group of people to get into a room and decide the best 12 or 16 teams in college football, and you’re not comparing apples to apples,” Franklin said.
If agreements can’t be reached, Sankey is content sticking to the current 12-team format. However, it shouldn’t matter how many teams are in the playoff — the Big Ten and SEC should be playing the same number of conference games, be it eight or nine.
College football and its future will go as the Big Ten and SEC see fit, thus the bickering and homerism within each conference is counterintuitive to the long-term health and pulse of the sport. The sooner they start to align and come to a consensus on key issues, be it conference scheduling, playoff format, and beyond, the better.