The expanded College Football Playoff is beginning to look like an invitational.
The Big Ten and SEC have grown so powerful and so bold, they are acting like the world is not enough; they’ll settle for most of the expanded playoff bracket.
The two giants have united like collegiate Wonder Twins, and their demands are extensive. The conferences, which at one point sought as many as four automatic berths each — an allowance perhaps never even considered before — in a further-expanded CFP bracket, now seem to be OK with three each. Well, that’s if the Big Ten and SEC are also automatically granted the top two seeds (which would come with byes) in a 14-team iteration of an expanded bracket that would begin in 2026.
“It just means more” has never meant more.
This is about threading a needle through access and money and scheduling and outrage and, well, egos too. There will be plenty of that in the coming days until this latest CFP disturbance is settled. And surely, some will question that teams should need to earn those top two spots by more than their conference affiliation.
Still, a hard truth must be acknowledged: The Big Ten and SEC really do run things. They really do deserve at least some dispensation. That’s tough to swallow in a sport like college football, which has occasionally been dominated by swagger and smack talk off the field.
What’s difficult is to watch the CFP sausage being made and stuffed through a 14-team bracket.
The 10 FBS commissioners and Notre Dame’s administrator, who will continue to meet this month as the CFP Management Committee, are under a hard deadline. ESPN needs to know what it is on the table as it seeks to extend its media rights agreement with the CFP. The conferences need to figure out how they…
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