SEC needs to do the right thing and send Big Ten and its automatic bids packing

New York Times

30-05-2025

DESTIN, Fla. — It's been fun this week to wonder, speculate and argue about the next iteration of the College Football Playoff model, sort of like it would be fun to reimagine your family room after a house fire turned everything to ash.
Really, though the arguing is enjoyable, and it's what people in and around college football have been doing since the days of leather helmets and presidential commissions that had purpose (see: Teddy Roosevelt, 1905, forward pass). 'Who did you play?' and 'Your coach cheats!' and 'We have academic standards' hold this bizarre tapestry together as much as marching bands and tailgating and absurdly high coaching contract buyouts.
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Which is one more reason to reject the 4-4-2-2-1 playoff model (also known as FFTTO, which stands for Football Fans, Turn To Opera) that Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti is trying to ram through with support from the SEC. I'm not sure we need more reasons. It's contrary to the idea of competition, it rewards status over achievement, and it's embarrassing to say out loud. Are those enough?
Here's one more anyway: We must save the College Football Playoff selection committee.
We must keep our Tuesday nights in the fall. We must preserve the opportunity to speculate about what those 13 lucky souls will do. We must retain the right to get angry at them when they inevitably do the wrong thing. We must keep that cherished college football tradition — arguing — alive and robust.
Could the SEC be getting led astray by the Big 10? @joerexrode worries that may be the case… pic.twitter.com/1MAxJr0Wha
— Paul Finebaum (@finebaum) May 27, 2025
I know some of you recoiled at first mention of the selection committee, and I realize framing a CFP format made up mostly of at-large selections as a way to maintain the power of that committee is a good way to get people to dislike that format. But everything in college sports these days is lesser-of-two-evils, so let's play out the greater of two evils known as the FFTTO.
That's four automatic bids for the Big Ten and the SEC, two apiece for the ACC and Big 12 and one for the highest-ranked conference champion outside the Power 4. In a 14-team format, that leaves one bid for either Notre Dame if it's ranked in the top 14, or for an at-large selection. In a 16-team format, you would have two or three at-large selections, depending on Notre Dame.
(And don't ask why we must move on from the 12-team format that worked quite well last season and will complete an era of two years after the 2025 season. Just chalk everything up in this industry to greed, arrogance and incompetence, and you're probably in the neighborhood.)
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The selection committee in the FFTTO model picks a team or two at the bottom of the field and seeds them at the end. This is not enough to make Tuesday evenings interesting, and 'Laverne & Shirley' isn't walking through that door. Of much more importance, this means conference standings will dictate the field.
That makes sense in the NFL, with a limited number of teams, with parity, with all games against comparable teams and with divisional foes playing each other twice a year. In college football, with 18 teams in the Big Ten, 17 in the ACC and 16 in the Big 12 and SEC — with teams in the same leagues often playing schedules that are vastly different in overall rigor — it's a joke.
So is the concept of 'play-in' games during championship weekend, the Big Ten and SEC having 3 versus 6 and 4 versus 5 games for automatic bids. So is the idea that the SEC needs this format or compares with the Big Ten in terms of depth of quality programs.
Yes, the Big Ten has won the last two national titles. And yes, these leagues have a tremendous rivalry when it comes to fan bases and resources. But the SEC can fill those four automatic bids with quality and go way past, and it would suffer in some years under this format. Georgia, Texas, Alabama, Florida, Tennessee, Oklahoma, LSU, Texas A&M, Auburn … the ingredients are there for championship football, and most of those schools have it in their recent history.
The Big Ten has Michigan, Ohio State, Oregon and Penn State, and then other programs have had surges, but nothing suggesting the ability to win a national championship. Indiana was a great story last season, but I'm struggling to get excited for Indiana-Minnesota and Iowa-Illinois on 'Play-In-Game Weekend Brought To You By Zalinsky's Auto Parts.'
Keep the five automatic bids and fill the rest of the field out with nine or 11 at-large selections, depending on whether it goes to 14 or 16. Keep playing conference championship games, with Playoff byes as the primary rewards. That's not exciting, but that's why it's not advisable to go full bloat on your leagues and Playoff field while killing the Pac-12. There are consequences.
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Keep playing major nonleague games, because otherwise, the selection committee is going to be light on data to compare the conferences.
And take those nonleague games seriously, because the field is mostly at-large selections and winning those games will mean a lot. In the world of automatic bids, in the world of league standings meaning everything, some coaches might view and approach those games like NFL preseason games.
It would be nice to see the SEC go to nine conference games, too, but if that's going to happen only with four automatic bids? Stay at eight. Shoot, go to seven if we can avoid FFTTO. It would be better for the Power 4 leagues to play the same number of league games, but again, that does not get us to apples for apples.
And then let's make sure the selection committee understands the importance of schedule strength and is armed with the best and most transparent way possible to value it. That the SEC would even consider propping up the Big Ten with the automatic bids is an overreaction to last season, when Indiana and SMU got in over Alabama, Ole Miss and South Carolina.
As seen and heard this week at the SEC spring meetings, the whining over that has not ceased.
I think the committee got it right. You might not. We should all be able to agree that it was very close and that both sides had arguments. That's how we should like it.
Florida athletic director Scott Stricklin told reporters this week that a committee 'is not ideal to choose a postseason,' but he didn't have a better idea. That's because there isn't one, not with this many teams of such varying quality and circumstance.
The SEC can make this right. Commissioner Greg Sankey, sensitive to 'good for the game' jabs from other commissioners and questions from media, can lead the way on something that would warrant those four words.
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It was good to learn this week that SEC coaches favor sticking with five automatic bids and going at-large for the rest. They should feel that way. It's better for them. They might complain a lot for millionaires and might overstate the quality of the SEC a bit — you're not playing the Kansas City Chiefs every week, guys — but they're not dumb.
As for their bosses, this is a stickier issue. I've talked to athletic directors in the Big Ten and SEC about the FFTTO, and I can paraphrase the view of the AD as such: 'Yes, I'd prefer competition to earn bids, but knowing that Playoff money will be in the budget every year no matter what is a big deal.'
That's understandable. These jobs are not easy. Every dollar matters. Revenue sharing is coming. Nonrevenue sports are up for review. But that doesn't mean you make your main revenue driver look like pro wrestling.
As the SEC spring meetings wrap up, those of us who still think college football has a lot to offer and has not been burned to the ground have more hope than a few days ago. Sankey handed out info packets to reporters Thursday detailing the SEC's schedule strength superiority over the past decade. This is a bit obnoxious. But the data is relevant. We should keep it in mind.
And Sankey and his athletic directors should leave in the Gulf of Mexico the especially flammable pile of kindling that Petitti has been trying to sell them.
(Photo of Greg Sankey: Todd Kirkland / Getty Images)