Well, well, well … Ross Dellenger at Yahoo Sports is reporting the Power 2 are flexing their muscle in the changes coming to the CFP in 2026 when the new media contract goes live. I don’t think there’s any doubt that the field is going to expand to 14 or 16. Where this becomes a more significant issue relates to the concept of automatic bids where the SEC and B1G will likely get 4 automatic bids annually. I would assume that means the ACC and Big 12 will likely get 2 automatic bids, and the Group of 5 gets 1 bid with 1 at-large (likely Notre Dame’s spot) in a 14-team bracket. Add 2 at-large selections or a 5th bid for the Power 2 conferences for a 16 team bracket. A couple of thoughts:
Making the regular season and championship weekend matter – I assume Greg Sankey did not like some of the remarks his coaches especially Lane Kiffin made later in the season about participation in the SECCG. The flip side of this is that some are considering whether the SEC and B1G may decide to give their top 2 regular season bids and name the team with the best regular season record as conference champion. The 3rd and 6th and 4th and 5th teams would play on that first weekend in December for the other 2 bids. ESPN and Fox paid a lot of money for the media rights to those games and don’t want to lose those games.
Playoff expansion may save the SEC rivalries and high-profile OOC games – With this move away from the committee selection of the field to automatic bids, the only reason not to add the 9th SEC game is whether the schools can’t get additional money from ESPN. There is no reason not to have all of the mainstay rivalries that make the SEC mean more as annual events. I’ll happily support the addition of 2 or 4 teams to the playoff in exchange for the Deep South’s Oldest Rivalry, the 3rd Saturday in October, the Magnolia Bowl, and Texas-Texas A&M among others as annual games.
As a result of this, it looks like the SEC and Big 10 are discussing a scheduling agreement that will be sold outside their existing media packages. That package would be a financial windfall for both leagues, and Georgia can keep the some of the current OOC games scheduled over the remainder of the decade in addition playing more Big 10 teams.
How are the bowls going to react to this – Will the NY6 continue to have a role in the CFP as the sites for the quarterfinals and semifinals, or will the appeal of playing college football on campus win out? I’m ambivalent to this. The $230 price tag for my seats in Sanford made me want to puke. That needs to be fixed.
Keep an eye out as SEC and B1G brass get together in New Orleans this week. A finalized playoff format for 2026 is likely necessary before these other things to sweeten the regular season, so the clock is ticking.
What do you think? Let us know in the comments.
If SEC gets two automatic bids, does the SECCG just turn into a scrimmage?
The SEC and B1G are getting a minimum of 4 auto bids. It will either be about seeding for the playoff if the top 2 teams. In a 14 team playoff, the top 2 seeds get byes, so most years the bye slots will be the B1G and SEC champions. There are rumors they may use that weekend for the next 4 to play for the other 2 bids with the team with the best conference record named as champion and the #2 team also gets an auto bid.
The inexorable slog towards a NFL-lite super conference.
It’s already there. It’s just there are 4 divisions and 1 team who thinks they are better than everyone else.
When this went to 12, the postseason became NFL Lite.
There are many more so-called eligible participants now than there will be when it reaches disney’s desired destination.
If I’m Wake or Duke or Texas Tech, I start planning for the end of the gravy train.
I still don’t believe 32 programs are going to split off knowing there are some who are used to winning who will now being taking Ls.
Disney may want that destination, but Fox’s deal with the Big 10 makes that problematic.
The NFL will recognize that NCAA FBS is a competing pro league and start scheduling on Saturdays as well as Sundays. Those college football broadcast contracts will not be as valuable.
I don’t know about that. Do they think people are going to stay home from a college game to watch an NFL game? Do they think they convince someone who is a fan of a particular college team to watch an NFL game at the same time?
They may pick up the people who watch a pro game on Sunday who doesn’t have a rooting interest in CFB. Those are the people they have on Sundays anyway and those people don’t watch CFB from noon to midnight now. Is Fox going to cannibalize their Big Noon package and Big 10 relationship to show an NFL game on a Saturday? Since Disney only has Monday night, are they going to put an NFL game on ABC on Saturday night over an SEC game (say Georgia-Texas)?
It seems the regular season relationship between the NFL and FBS CFB is symbiotic. The problem starts in December when the CFB playoff starts. There aren’t enough time windows.
No, I don’t think season ticket holders are going to give up their tickets to watch NFL. That would be a silly thought.
The fans in the seats are not included in the viewing ratings.The issue is whether the fans in, say, Kansas City are going to forego watching LSU versus South Carolina when the Chiefs are on television or, their huge rival, the Raiders are playing.
The problem is Fox, NBC, Disney and CBS have Saturday college football commitments from September to December.
Do you think the Falcons are going to peel significant viewers away from an SEC game involving Georgia if they played on a Saturday?
Sad to say, I just don’t care anymore. I’ll watch the games individually but the tournament doesn’t interest me.
I watched very little outside the Georgia game. Some of that was being on a trip during the first round. I watched about 5 minutes of the 2 semifinals and didn’t watch any of the championship game.
Its an abomination and is only going to get worse over time. They are going to run the sport into the ground while trying to chase every dollar they can pluck from the current (soon to be former) fans. The regular season games on Saturdays will still be great if you can ignore all of the surrounding bullsiht, but they can have the rest of it.
They are walking a fine line of turning the college football regular season into the college basketball regular season.
Can’t wait to see how they blame the fans for walking away. The WorldWide Leader can’t fail, they can only be failed.
Could be many things decline of the SEC, or maybe a couple of SEC teams.
Overall viewership is rising as I know coworkers who are loving the discussion of making the playoff. On the other side is the established long term fan who as posts above show are watching less football. As a result they will not point to this moment as the decline with overall viewership up. NASCAR does the same refusing to acknowledge viewers started leaving in the mid to early 90s. The new fan will fade in their enthusiasm for their new crush to fades.
I can’t do anything about it but I did try to see and enjoy the golden era before the playoff expansion and free agency.
I’m still watching UGA but my desire to watch as many games has declined. Playoff expansion fans just don’t get that the Michigan Ohio State game isn’t must see TV when it doesn’t have impact on a team I like better having a clear impact on the national title picture. Grizzard was correct on their so called big game… 2 mules fighting over a turnip.
Frankly, a lot of the problems of college sports (football in particular) can be blamed on television. This isn’t ESPN’s fault.
This is about how the NCAA completely botched the transition to NIL going all the way back to the O’Bannon case. The conferences representing the schools are trying to make the House settlement cash flow neutral. They aren’t going to cut other sports (Title IX). They don’t want to cut the overhead. They can’t cut the facility debt service incurred prior to NIL (player comp was on the balance sheet in facilities). They can’t eliminate the transfer of net cash flow from athletics to the university’s general fund.
The only way they can do it in their minds is to push for more revenue. This SEC/Big 10 scheduling agreement that appears to be in the works is the latest attempt at this. If you can sell 16 games outside of your current media rights deal, that drops straight to the cash flow bottom line.
That’s why I say if you want to understand an athletic department’s financial health, don’t look at the income statement … look at the cash flow statement.
The secondary ticket market tells me there is no lacking in demand.
The secondary market at the top is robust. People want to get in the Iron Bowl, the Cocktail Party, etc. Move to the 2nd and 3rd tier of the Power 4 and to the Group of 5. Hell, the World’s Smallest Cocktail Party can’t give their tickets away.
Absolutely correct!!
Must not’ve checked stubhub for the Sugar Bowl…. I have two e-tickets I will sell you!
Not for the Sugar Bowl but it’s happened to me too.
I bought two. They weren’t given away. Far from it.
They already play games in Dublin. How long until that’s expanded to London, Mexico City, Frankfurt, Dubai and other parts unknown to grow the brand? I hate this…
Keeping the rivalry games (Georgia-awburn, vols-bama) is a positive. The rest sucks. The senator foretold the loss of college football. I’m at the point where tailgating is the highlight of most Saturdays. I still enjoy watching Georgia seal club the gators, nats, etc. My seats are now north of $4000, while the TV money grows faster than Biden inflation. At some point sitting in the gulf catching snapper in the fall is going to put weigh going to Athens.
No idea what they will do but you can guarantee it will be what brings in the most money short term and will not be impacted by the fans desires.
Listened to most of excellent podcast over the weekend: “Who Killed College Football.” They do episodes on single suspects like coaches, conferences, the NCAA, television, etc. My wife said, wow, somebody made a podcast just for you.
One of main reasons for playoff expansion is an active (if unstated) encouragement of parity. Historically, there have rarely been more than four teams – and often fewer – at the end of the regular season that can credibly make a case for being #1. The expanded playoffs haven’t changed that. Yet.
Gun-for-hire, annual free agency is not a bug but a complementary feature of what Mickey hath wrought. So, even the NCAA had the gumption to rein it in (which it doesn’t), don’t expect it to change. Roster dilution means more teams in the mix and, in theory, more engaged fanbases and more viewers. ESPN – all the networks, actually – want teams from the NE and west coast to regularly make the playoffs instead of the post-season remaining a Deep South-Rust Belt monopoly.
For now, the SEC and Big Integer continue to dominate but the network suits have been trying to change that. And they’ll eventually make it so, by having those two conferences expand even farther beyond their historic footprints, weakening if not killing their already diluted regional character. The only reason we’re not quite at a junior AFC and NFC is that no-one’s figured out what to do with the scraps (like Clemson and FSU).
Is this going to work in the long term? Probably not. It’ll chase away a lot of fans in the SE and Rust Belt and won’t gain a compensating number of viewers elsewhere. But the people at the networks and program administration who initially pull it off will make their fortunes. They won’t care what happens next. Look at what happened to NASCAR and rasslin’.
The automatic bids are atrocious. The B1G had four and two of them showed they weren’t ready for the big show. The ACC had two and SMU completely showed they didn’t deserve to be in. Of the three from the SEC, Tennessee and a banged up Georgia really didn’t look the part, and Texas was the benefactor of some questionable play calling. The only group that might have a legitimate gripe is the Big XII as ASU put up a great fight and who knows what coulda been with a BYU in the mix instead of Boise. Just griping at this point, but the model of four with maybe expanding to an additional two would’ve been better than what we saw this season. Plenty of argument about who didn’t belong and less about who did. Alabama and Cackalacky didn’t help their argument with LS against the B1G, maybe the Laner could’ve made some noise. Who knows, but me not likey this proposal at all.
12 was too many. They certainly aren’t going to contract the field. Now that the SEC and Big 10 fully control the CFP beyond 2026 they are going to do anything they can to funnel as much money as possible to their conferences. The Senator wrote that conference realignment was about maximizing revenue coming from the expanded CFP … that’s exactly what it has turned out to be.
The only reason I’m ok with this proposal is the automatic bid structure is likely the only way we get 9 conference games and save the rivalries.
Screw the playoff … make September through November matter.
Expanding the playoffs requires that the regular season eliminate at least one and preferably two games. The conference championship games should get killed immediately. Indeed, we saw how meaningless they were this past season. All teams in every conference should also eliminate at least one cupcake game. This will significantly impact smaller schools as these games produce a lot of revenue for them. But much like what has happened in our own economy, the gap between the have and have nots will increase exponentially. And quickly. The positive result of all this is that the smaller schools will have no choice but to adopt a model that will look very much like what we all grew up with. That is, if you’re old like me. It could be a good time to start following a smaller school you have some connection to.
Expansion to 14 or 16 requires no change to the current calendar unless they want to make the championship game earlier in January.
The conference championship games especially the SECCG are money in the conferences’ pockets. The networks have paid for that content, and there’s no way they are going to pay the same amount for less content. Same for shortening the regular season. It’s not going to happen, period.
Cupcake games? Everyone needs them for home games. Very few Power 4 schools are going to agree to travel to Wake Forest.
Ok