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Big Changes Could Be Coming This Month to CFB and the CFP

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iowabuckeyes's picture
by iowabuckeyes
February 16, 2025 at 11:15pm
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I’ll apologize in advance if this is TL;DR but according to Yahoo! Sports Ross Dellenger, seismic changes could be announced before February is over.

Last spring, during intense and, at times, heated negotiations over the future of the College Football Playoff, leaders of the Big Ten and SEC threatened to create their own postseason system if they were not granted a majority of CFP revenue and full authority over the playoff format.

In the end, executives of the 10 FBS leagues and Notre Dame signed a memorandum of understanding handing control over to college football’s two richest conferences.

Soon, they are expected to exercise that control.

According to most who have viewed the memorandum of understanding from last spring, the SEC and Big Ten hold sole discretion on the future CFP format starting in 2026, the beginning of the CFP’s new six-year television agreement with ESPN that runs through the 2031 playoff.

Here’s the gist of what Dellenger has reported:

  • The B1G and SEC ADs are meeting in New Orleans this Wednesday, the second time they’ve gotten together in the past five months. ​
  • The CFP management committee will be meeting in Dallas on February 25. Assuming the SEC and B1G reach a consensus this week in NOLA, they could jointly present ideas to further expand the playoff to 14 or 16 teams, assign multiple automatic qualifiers per league, and finalize a scheduling arrangement together that could bring beaucoup big bucks in additional revenue from TV partners. 
  • The 14- or 16-team model would grant four automatic qualifiers each to the SEC and Big Ten; two each to the ACC and Big 12; and one to the highest-ranked Group of Five champion. The other conference can whine but the data supporting the SEC and B1G’s dominance doesn’t lie: Since the 2014 playoff (and making allowances for the latest conference expansion), the SEC has had 52 teams ranked inside the top 14 of the CFP’s rankings heading into CCG weekend, or about 4.7 teams per year. The Big Ten has had 51 teams (4.6). The Big 12 is next at 23 (2.1), followed by the ACC (20/1.8), Notre Dame (5/0.45) and Group of Five (3/0.27).
  • The 14-team format would most likely be a 4-4-2-2-1+1 model in which the top two seeds receive first-round byes. There would be no byes in a 16-team structure. In either case, the CFP selection committee’s role would be greatly diminished as it would presumably seed 1 through 14 or 16 based directly on its top-25 rankings.
  • The playoff format change would clear the way for SEC administrators to make the move to play nine regular-season conference games and could possibly trigger the P4s to overhaul their conference championship weekend. Should the SEC elect to go to nine conference games, the SEC and B1G might agree to some kind of regular season challenge.

Personally, I’d love to see a B1G-SEC challenge. If everyone shares the risk equally, an OOC loss to a good team may not hurt the best teams’ SOS that much, especially if conference standings are the priority with each conference guaranteed a known number of CFP slots.

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