It’s not exactly a secret that the NCAA is looking to tweak the College Football Playoff format. Everyone loved the 12-team playoff, even if ESPN’s coverage of the inaugural event didn’t evoke warm feelings. It didn’t require an oracle to understand that the seeding and the current process for automatic bids would ruffle some feathers, especially since the eventual National Championship winners, the Ohio State Buckeyes, emerged as a No. 9 seed. Something had to give. But conference commissioners have been engaged in discussions since the second round of the first-ever 12-team CFP. Action Network’s Brett McMurphy reported that they would hold “in-depth discussions” regarding the structure of the 12-team format, particularly focusing on seeding.
As it currently stands, the top four seeds in the College Football Playoff, which receive a first-round bye, must be conference champions, creating a situation where some of the format’s weaker teams can capitalize on one of its greatest advantages. The SEC and Big Ten sought to address this. In February, ESPN’s Heather Dinich reported that SEC commissioner Greg Sankey and Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti aim for “straight seeding” based on the College Football Playoff committee rankings while ensuring spots for five champions. Paul Finebaum criticized this, asserting it was “completely wrong,” lamenting that the two power conferences would secure more automatic qualifiers than others. While it’s unsurprising that the largest conferences would advocate for this, a surprising detail mentioned by Dinich, as she heads to Dallas for the annual spring meetings, raised eyebrows.
“One possibility, which could be viewed as a compromise, is having conferences earn automatic bids through their play each season. A model in which each Power 4 league can earn guaranteed spots through a combination of its teams’ overall records — and maybe even TV ratings, according to a source — could be presented. The highest-ranked conferences would earn the most automatic bids.”
Come again? If that sounds less like a decision from a competition committee and more like something devised in a boardroom of media executives, you’re not imagining it. The notion that a league’s playoff position could be connected to TV ratings isn’t merely a bad look — it’s a significant red flag. This conversation isn’t about determining the best team anymore; it’s about fashioning a TV product, where competition is secondary to viewership. However, Dinich did use the term “maybe even,” suggesting nothing is finalized at this time.
And as usual, is it worth questioning whether ratings are driving the bus? Change is on the horizon. But the real question isn’t what the playoff will look like in 2026; it’s whether college football will continue to pretend this is about competition or simply about who garners the largest audiences. Then again, perhaps this is the solution to preventing the Indianas and SMUs of the world from sneaking into the dance. Deserving or not, they don’t capture attention. In this new era, that may very well be all that counts.
