Sources: SEC, Big Ten building momentum to further expand College Football Playoff to 14 or 16 teams

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.

Within the SEC and Big Ten, momentum is building to further expand the playoff to 14 or 16 teams, assign multiple automatic qualifiers per league — as many as four each for themselves — and finalize a scheduling arrangement together that may fetch millions in additional revenue from TV partners, sources told Yahoo Sports.

The playoff format change would clear the way for SEC administrators to, finally, make the long-discussed move to play nine regular-season conference games and would trigger, perhaps, all four power leagues to overhaul their conference championship weekend.

These ideas and concepts, previously reported by Yahoo Sports as possibilities, are now serious agenda items within the highest governing bodies of the SEC, Big Ten, Big 12 and ACC, according to officials from each of those leagues. The 11 members of the CFP Management Committee — the 10 FBS conference commissioners and Notre Dame’s athletic director — were contacted for this story, many of them confirming the existence of these potential ideas but declining specific comment on the matter.

Final decisions are expected in the coming weeks.

SEC and Big Ten athletic directors will meet Wednesday in New Orleans for the second time in the last five months. Big 12 athletic directors are expected to discuss the future playoff format at meetings this…

Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/sources-sec-big-ten-building-momentum-to-further-expand-college-football-playoff-to-14-or-16-teams-235759195.html

Author : Yahoo Sports

Publish date : 2025-02-16 23:57:00

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