Like him or not, SEC commissioner Greg Sankey has become the face of College Football Playoff expansion. It’s OK to feel somewhat conflicted about everything that Sankey brought to the the table. As a college football fan without a true dog in the fight other than wanting an entertaining product, I’m conflicted.
After all, these are significant changes to a sport that not so long ago had 2 teams playing in a BCS National Championship Game. Sankey’s vision for an expanded Playoff in 2026 would include:
16 teams 4 SEC auto bids 4 Big Ten auto bids 2 ACC auto bids 2 Big 12 auto bids 1 Group of 5 auto bid 3 at-large bidsIn a not-so-stunning development, the non-SEC/Big Ten parties aren’t exactly thrilled with that proposal, which was discussed at SEC Spring Meetings (and dissected by everyone afterward). If you’re a fan of a non-SEC/Big Ten team or just a college football purist, you’re probably either against expansion altogether or more in favor of the model that was proposed by the ACC, Big 12, Group of 5 and Notre Dame:
1 auto bid for ACC winner 1 auto bid for Big 12 winner 1 auto bid for Big Ten winner 1 auto bid for SEC winner 1 auto bid for highest-ranked Group of 5 conference champ 11 at-large bidsThose are drastically different models. Hence, why we’ve reached this point, wherein everyone is seemingly at odds with one other about the $1.3 billion (that’s “billion” with a “b”) future of the Playoff. The threat of the Big Ten and SEC — both of whom expanded with monumental additions in the 2020s — taking their ball and going home to create their own championship will loom large in any future conversations about power conference commissioners.
There are 2 extremely dumb arguments at the forefront of this, and the irony is that they somewhat contradict each other.
Dumbest argument No. 1: Greg Sankey says that “not losing” is more important than playing quality opponents
I’m going to lose my mind if I have to hear Sankey or any totally unbiased Alabama fan claim that the current College Football Playoff doesn’t reward strength of schedule all because the Tide didn’t make the field at 9-3.
SEC's Greg Sankey said in current College Football Playoff format, "it's clear that not losing" is more important than playing quality opponents
— Brett McMurphy (@Brett_McMurphy) May 26, 2025Sankey, who undoubtedly is echoing the sentiment that Alabama AD Greg Byrne conveyed in the aftermath of watching the Tide get left out of the 12-team Playoff, is conveniently ignoring several key factors.
If “not losing” was really more important than playing quality opponents, why did 2023 Alabama make the Playoff with 1 loss over an undefeated Florida State? Or better yet, why didn’t an undefeated 2017 UCF squad make the field over 1-loss Alabama? Shoot, if “not losing” was the metric that mattered, surely we saw a bunch of Group of 5 teams make the 4-team field, right? Nope. Only 1. And that team was unbeaten Cincinnati, who only made the field because it started as a top-10 team and it beat preseason AP Top 25 teams Notre Dame and Indiana, both of whom qualified as “quality opponents.”
Speaking of Indiana, that’s ironically a major source of Sankey’s/Alabama’s gripe. It’s ironic because Indiana is a member of the Big Ten, who is believed to be in lock step with the SEC pushing the 4-4-2-2-1 model. The Big Ten has always bragged about its 9-game conference schedule since it made that switch in 2016 — even though it resulted in the conference’s champ getting left out of 3 consecutive 4-team Playoff fields from 2016-18 — and thrown shade at the SEC’s 8-game conference schedule. Sankey, however, left that part out of his argument against the Playoff’s current format.
The selection committee has repeatedly acknowledged that the SEC has the toughest road to the Playoff. If that weren’t the case, why would it have never left it out of the 4-team field while every other Power Conference missed the field at least twice? Shoot, the SEC had 2 instances of getting multiple bids into the 4-team field.
And in case we forgot, how many 9-3 teams were considered for the 12-team Playoff? Three. Alabama, Ole Miss and South Carolina … all of whom were from the SEC. I missed the part where 9-3 ACC/Big 12 teams had a Playoff path as at-large teams. Instead, a 9-3 team that lost to a pair of 6-6 teams was considered and then ultimately not selected because a couple of 11-1 teams (Indiana and SMU) were more deserving of the last 2 at-large spots. Compare the final Playoff rankings of those 3 teams to the other 9-3 Power Conference squads who didn’t play in a conference title game:
No. 11 Alabama No. 14 Ole Miss No. 15 South Carolina No. 19 Mizzou No. 20 Illinois No. 21 Syracuse No. 23 ColoradoTo recap, Mizzou‘s No. 19 ranking in the final Playoff Poll meant that all 4 SEC teams who finished the regular season at 9-3 were ranked above the 9-3 teams from other Power Conferences.
To suggest that the selection committee was “anti-SEC” is why Sankey is deservedly receiving eye rolls. You can accuse the selection committee of a lot of things — not watching enough football, constantly changing rationale for rankings, fumbling any sort of public justification for a ranking, etc. — but arguing that it’s too subjective of a process because it slighted the SEC is about the dumbest thing you can do.
Dumbest argument No. 2: The Big Ten and SEC are just capitalizing on recent history and not really that dominant
If you really believe that, you’ve been in a college football coma for the last 20 years.
If you think that all conferences are created equal, you’re not looking at reality. “Reality” isn’t just recruiting rankings, AP Polls and NFL Draft numbers, all of which favor the Big Ten and SEC during that stretch. Nah. Reality is that the ACC and Big 12 have fallen off considerably at the place where this matters — winning championships.
Of the current Big 12 schools, do you know which program won the last national title? It was Colorado in 1990. Also of note? The Big 12 has a 1-7 record in Playoff games with the lone win coming via 2022 TCU, who then lost 65-7 in the national championship.
The ACC, on the other hand, does at least have the 2010s Clemson. But that’s the only current ACC member who won a Playoff game. It has yet to win a New Year’s 6 Bowl or a Playoff game in the 2020s, and all of those losses were by double digits.
Since Clemson won it all in 2018, every national title has gone to the Big Ten or the SEC. In the 11 years of the Playoff, 9 of the national titles (6 SEC, 3 Big Ten) have gone to a school from one of those conferences. In the 21st century, there are 26 national title winners recognized. Of those 26, 22 of them were won by teams that are currently in the Big Ten or SEC.
Let me repeat that because the “history shouldn’t dictate the future” crowd might’ve just skimmed that — the current members of the Big Ten and SEC won 85% of the national titles in the 21st century.
That’s how we got here.
Well, plus the Big Ten and SEC lapped the field with their respective TV contracts in a way that we’ve never seen before, which is why we can no longer speak of NIL like it’s 1995 or even 2005. That certainly played a part in both of their respective expansion efforts, though it’s not entirely responsible for why there’s such a national title disparity in the last quarter century.
The Big Ten and SEC have been better at a time when it’s never been more monetarily beneficial — and urgent — to be better. A failure to acknowledge why that’s being used as leverage to get half the Playoff bids ahead of the revenue sharing era is downright negligent.
These are the 2 dumbest arguments related to Greg Sankey’s expanded Playoff stance Saturday Down South.
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