Less than a month removed from the conclusion of the first-ever 12-team College Football Playoff, leaders from the SEC and Big Ten, the two most powerful conferences, will hold on Wednesday the second set of joint meetings to plot the next steps regarding the future of college football. It serves as an unofficial opening salvo to the rest of the FBS schools as college athletics continues its frantic sprint toward underlying stasis.
The biggest action item in the closed-door sessions will surround where, exactly, the two leagues stand when it comes to the CFP structure, format, timing and more. Few who spoke to Sports Illustrated in recent weeks expect any sort of declaratory news conference involving Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti and counterpart Greg Sankey. However, there is little doubt the CFP fans see in coming years will trace its origins to some of the chatter this week ahead of broader CFP meetings in Dallas at the end of the month.
What could that all result in? Here’s a primer on the future of the College Football Playoff and the issues that remain for every conference to discuss over the coming months.
Timing and Unanimity
Perhaps the biggest obstacle is the need for a unanimous decision regarding any changes to the 2025–26 playoff. Whether it be expansion, changes to how teams are placed or if the bowl contracts for future games are signed, a complete consensus has to be made among the 10 FBS conferences and the Notre Dame Fighting Irish leadership. Should just one league object to any potential tweaks, we will essentially see the same version of the CFP we did this past season.
That doesn’t mean there couldn’t be potential alterations for this upcoming season’s playoff, though.
“It depends on what those changes are, if any, as far as when we would implement them,” CFP executive director Rich Clark said recently. “I would say it’s possible, but I don’t know if it’s going to happen or not. There are probably some things that could happen in short order, like tweaks to the 2025 season, but we haven’t determined that.”
The most pressing issue beyond a consensus is timing. The annual set of media days to mark the unofficial start of the season is just five months away. Most commissioners and administrators will spend at least one of those months preoccupied with March Madness. Throw in the need to consult with television and bowl partners on any tweaks, and there is more or less an unofficial deadline of no later than the first week in May, when the CFP Board of Managers (university presidents who govern the entity) meets, for any notable changes for the coming season being worked out.
When it comes to the CFP for the 2026 season—dubbed “Year 13” among those involved as a reference to a new contract governing the postseason—things are in a different boat and unanimity is not required. The Big Ten and SEC together are expected to be able to push forward any changes the two leagues want with regard to the postseason structure without the need for any other conferences to acquiesce. The ability to do that puts even more emphasis on this week’s meeting between the budding “Power 2” partners even if there might not be any formal action taken among the dozens of athletic directors and conference officials in attendance.
To Expand or Not to Expand?
The biggest questions for the future of the playoff are how many teams are involved and how they are selected.
There is a limited set of options as part of the six-year extension with media partner ESPN: stick with the current 12-team field or bump the playoff up by two to four teams. Among numerous sources surveyed by SI, opinion remains divided on which path the playoff will ultimately land on. Many noted this week’s meeting in New Orleans would go a long way in seeing which way the winds are blowing.
Far more nuanced is how the field is determined. While there is always expected to be a selection committee component in much the same manner that has existed for the past decade, the questions about who could automatically qualify (and how they would do so) are expected to be intensely debated over the coming months.
At present, the top five highest-ranked conference champions are guaranteed a spot in the playoff and the top four of those receive a bye. This is what led to the Boise State Broncos skipping a first-round game and earning a No. 3 seed in the Fiesta Bowl despite being ranked by the committee as the ninth-best team in their top 25 at the end of the regular season. While the top five conference champions are always set to earn a place in the field, they may not be alone in getting a guaranteed berth.
The Big Ten has been the most active in suggesting changes to the overall format, putting forth proposals last year that included three automatic qualifiers from the Big Ten and SEC in a 14-team playoff or four from those conferences along with two each from the ACC and Big 12 (plus a Group of 5 champion and one at large/Notre Dame). Chatter has also increased in the past two months about the potential for a 16-team field and access for the two conferences who have combined for nine of the past 11 national championships.
While the SEC was previously a bit reserved in supporting such proposals, the uproar over three of the conference’s teams—the Alabama Crimson Tide, Ole Miss Rebels and South Carolina Gamecocks—being left out of the field opened the door to more critical thinking about what is best for the league.
Seeds of Doubt
If anything happens to the upcoming playoff, it will likely revolve around seeding.
Right now, the most frequently mentioned suggestion is to have the selection committee continue to rank teams as they normally do and then stop reseeding to take into account the top four conference champions. That was a big flaw that seemed to be realized in the first 12-team bracket as the No. 1 Oregon Ducks and No. 2 Georgia Bulldogs had a far harder path than if there had been a straight seeding of teams.
Using the committee’s final top 25 from last season for example, the Texas Longhorns and Penn State Nittany Lions would have received byes in the current 12-team format, while the Ohio State Buckeyes would have hosted the Arizona State Sun Devils instead of the Tennessee Volunteers.
This is one area where the unanimity needed for changes comes most into play. Leaders in several of the Group of 5 conferences question if it’s worth it to enact any seeding changes for one year that would risk potential revenue gains they could make in the current format. The Broncos earned $8 million for the Mountain West as a result of their ticket to the Fiesta Bowl quarterfinal. There’s an understandable fear that most teams would often be so far down the committee’s rankings they are simply ticketed to go on the road to be a one-and-done at some blueblood in first-round games.
This is the easiest of the action items to implement for the upcoming season, but finding a full consensus that works to everybody’s benefit will remain a high hurdle to clear.
It’s About the Money
Much of the future of the playoff will come down to the usual bottom line: money.
Revenue distribution for the playoff was agreed to by all conferences last spring and is expected to see a massive increase in payouts for the SEC and Big Ten in particular (estimates lay north of $20 million for schools starting in 2026). Yet there remain numerous other discussion points that will have an impact on the bottom line for leagues across the board no matter if there are 12, 14 or 16 teams in the playoff.
There is concern about any tweaks having an impact on the value of conference title games. In a perfect world, such entities would be scrapped in favor of the playoff starting earlier on the calendar, but they are among the biggest revenue drivers in the leagues’ media-rights deals and worth a lot to the television partners that greatly value the inventory the first week of December.
Preserving the appeal of such games when both teams could be assured spots in the playoff has been an ongoing discussion and has even led to some outside-the-box thinking about replacing or supplementing such games. ACC commissioner Jim Phillips talked openly last month about staging multiple championship-like games on the same weekend the conference normally hosts its title game—either for an automatic berth or to enhance the opportunity at an extra data point for the committee. Similar discussions are taking place in the other power conferences, as well.
There’s also the matter as to who is paying for such increases in media-rights revenue. While there are escalator clauses in the new CFP contract for any potential move from a 12-team playoff to a 14-team event, there appears to be less of an appetite on ESPN’s behalf to pony up hundreds of millions of dollars more over the coming years for even more expansion. The network also will deal with rights fee increases for the NBA next year and an opt out for NFL rights in the near future.
Oh, and don’t forget the bowls. The current six bowl partners of the playoff have deals in place with the CFP starting in 2026–27 but have not signed anything yet. That leaves open plenty of wiggle room about moving more games on campus in the future and, naturally, keeping more of the revenue in house.
TV Time
Finally, there’s the matter of when playoff games will take place.
CFP brass was pleased at the initial interest from fans in the 12-team format this past season and even pleasantly surprised at the ratings for the games that went head-to-head with the NFL on the Saturday of the first round (though most would prefer standalone TV windows).
Still, just about all involved—from the conference commissioner level all the way down to support staff on campus—understand things are probably not going to be sustainable with so much packed into such a short time frame every December. That’s especially the case if there are more on campus games in the first weekend.
There have been broader discussions regarding the holistic college football calendar, but there is a growing realization that something must be done sooner rather than later. Stakeholders have been actively looking at tweaks, like moving the season up to start at what is now considered Week 0, but there has been pushback from television partners all the way to those who sell tickets.
There’s also the little matter of the entity that, for now, governs the sport in the NCAA. Any potential reform of the calendar would fall under the purview of a current pause the Division I Board of Directors enacted over such legislation until after the House v. NCAA settlement is finalized and the body meets again this summer. That essentially rules out anything happening ahead of the 2025 season but gives those involved a pretty clear pecking order over the coming months if they want significant changes to happen in tandem with an altered postseason format the following year.
Regardless of what winds up happening soon, myriad competing interests are about to come to a head with the need for final decisions to be made. The path between now and kickoff figures to be just as winding—and thorny—as ever in college football, but there’s at least hope that grappling with such issues now could lead to much-needed stability into the 2030s.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as This Week's Big Ten–SEC Meeting Could Shape Future of College Football Playoff.
