How Year 2 of the 12-team College Football Playoff is already unfolding could make the SEC even more entrenched in its anti-automatic qualifiers stance.
It has been clear for quite some time now that the SEC isn’t on board with the Big Ten’s plan to move to more automatic qualifiers. While there was once some momentum that the two power conferences, which have control over the playoff’s future format, could align around a model that would reward four spots to each of their conferences in a 16-team format, those days now feel like a lifetime ago.
Ahead of a Dec. 1 deadline, the CFP is expected to stick with the status quo and keep the 12-team format in 2026. Mississippi State president Mark Keenum, who leads the College Football Playoff Board of Managers, said as much Friday on the Paul Finebaum Show.
What is interesting, though, is how this current season reinforces the SEC’s belief that more automatic qualifiers aren’t needed. Currently, the 12-team format awards five automatic spots to the five highest-ranked conference champions. A Group of Six team was not ranked in the initial CFP rankings.
That, according to SEC commissioner Greg Sankey, is something important to consider in the format discussions.
“I’ve been amazingly consistent since this move from four to something else started to say I’m not a fan of AQs (automatic qualifiers),” Sankey told a small group of reporters at Saturday’s Alabama-LSU game. “In fact, we have no Group of Five representatives in the top 25 … that’s problematic. That’s an indicator why you don’t just jump on the AQ bandwagon in my view. That could help us in particular, that could be problematic for us in particular not to have that assurance, but that’s where we’ve been as a group for six, seven years.”
The five highest-ranked conference champions get automatic berths to the College Football Playoff, with bye weeks rewarded to teams Nos. 1-4 in the rankings (byes going automatically to conference champs were abolished after last season). The rub as the SEC is concerned — and as is playing out this year — is that undeserving, and perhaps even unranked, teams who win their (less renowned) conference will get in over a two- or three-loss team who went through the SEC gauntlet. For example, No. 11 Texas and No. 12 Oklahoma were among the “12 best teams” in last week’s initial rankings. Neither would have made the actual bracket, though, because of automatic qualifiers (in last week’s bracket, that meant Virginia (ACC) and Memphis (American) made the field. Each lost this weekend).
If the season ended today, the SEC would get four playoff teams — including two (No. 3 Texas A&M and No. 4 Alabama) that would receive first-round byes. After No. 7 BYU lost this weekend, however, it’d be a good bet No. 11 Texas will jump into that field in this week’s rankings. Texas also looks like a good bet to finish with at least another loss, though, with top-five games at Georgia and vs. Texas A&M remaining. Two-loss Oklahoma is at Alabama this weekend.
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There is early saber-rattling down South. But there is also a world where the SEC could get as many as six teams in this year if the ACC and Big 12 both end up being one-bid leagues. Sankey and Keenum are aligned in their viewpoints of doing away with automatic qualifiers altogether.
“I’m not a big fan of automatic qualifiers,” Keenum said.”I think the best teams ought to play in our nation’s national tournament to determine who our national champion in college football is going to be, and not have automatic bids. That’s the position of the Southeastern Conference presidents, chancellors, our commissioner and probably most of the conferences that are part of CFP.”
Despite Keenum’s desire, that is unlikely to happen at this stage. Just as the SEC (and other conferences) can block a move to more automatic qualifiers, the Big Ten (and others) could stand against doing away with them completely. To this point, more automatic qualifiers has been a critical component of the Big Ten’s playoff expansion strategy.
These are just some of the reasons why there isn’t much optimism that a consensus will be reached ahead of that Dec. 1 deadline. Beyond the amount of automatic qualifiers, there is still the question of how many total teams should be included. The Big Ten has considered multiple options, including as big as 24 teams which has internal support amongst some conference schools, while the SEC has primarily locked into 16 teams if it expands.
“Different people want different things,” Sankey said. “So can we rally around a common direction is the question?”
