Can anyone stop the Big Ten-SEC CFP power grab? Don’t count out courts, politicians or ESPN

The Big Ten and SEC’s forced transformation of the College Football Playoff into an invitational is not inevitable.

For more than a year, before the first 12-team CFP even took place, college leaders have been focused on 2026, when the next CFP contract begins, the Big Ten and SEC gain more control and changes ranging from bracket expansion to additional automatic qualifiers (AQs) could come into play. The Big Ten first floated a radical format change a year ago, but public comments on such a dramatic overhaul remain scarce. That’s no accident.

An expansion of the postseason to include automatic bids weighted in favor of the Big Ten and SEC could draw legal and political scrutiny — to go along with already mounting public backlash — if the two wealthiest conferences try to force through a new format without any support from other leagues.

“It’s wrong and it’s pre-rigged,” said one of the more than a half dozen administrators from the other eight FBS conferences to speak to The Athletic about the AQ push by the Big Ten and SEC. “It flies in the face of earning your way into a championship field.”

This past season was the first with a Playoff field triple the size of the original, expanded from four to 12 teams with reserved spots for the five highest-ranked conference champions plus seven at-large bids. No conference receives preferential treatment, and everyone outside the Big Ten and SEC would like to keep it that way.

CFP leaders met last week in Dallas and left without making any decisions on changes for the upcoming season or future ones, though some did acknowledge a discussion of further expansion to 14 or 16 teams. It’s still possible tweaks to how the field is seeded and first-round byes awarded will be approved in time for 2025. The commissioners of the Big Ten and SEC voiced support for that after a summit of leaders from those leagues in New Orleans last month.

The rest of the CFP management committee, which is made up of the 10 Football Bowl Subdivision conference commissioners and Notre Dame’s athletic director, still needs convincing. Unanimous approval is needed to make a change for the coming season. The committee discussed whether a financial package could be agreed upon that would make the changes to seeding and byes more acceptable for those outside the Big Ten and SEC, according to people involved in the conversations. ACC, Big 12 and Group of 5 commissioners didn’t rule it out. They’ve asked the CFP for some models and information before another meeting next month.

A more divisive debate on 2026 didn’t reach last week’s meeting, but the latest reports about the potential power play by the SEC and Big Ten first floated last spring have their CFP partners already gearing up for a fight behind the scenes.

The Big Ten and SEC would like the next iteration of the CFP, starting in 2026, to replace selection committee subjectivity with a setup in which each power conference receives multiple automatic qualifiers. In a so-called 4-4-2-2-1-1 format, the SEC and Big Ten would get four spots each (determined by conference standings or league play-in games); the Big 12 and ACC would get two each. One spot would be reserved for the top non-power conference team, and the final spot would be accessible through the committee’s final rankings, giving independent Notre Dame a path to the Playoff, perhaps an automatic bid should the Irish finish above a certain ranking threshold.

“It’s ridiculous,” said an official from a school in one of the other power conferences.

But can mere opposition keep it from happening? The new agreement among the 10 FBS conferences and Notre Dame, signed last year, removed the need for unanimity within the group to make changes to the format and replaced it with parameters giving the Big Ten and SEC more power.

Exactly how much power is not fully known.

The weight of each league’s vote under the new agreement is not clear yet and may not be fully finalized. Terms of the memorandum of understanding signed by the conferences last year have not been made public. Several people familiar with the deal have confirmed to The Athletic that language in the agreement calls for “meaningful consultation” with, and “input” from, the entire group.

“How can it be considered ‘meaningful consultation’ if they go with a format (that) eight of 10 conferences are against?” asked another power conference athletic director.

There is a case to be made that coming off a season in which the Big 12 put only its champion in the CFP and the ACC was a game-winning, 56-yard field goal by Clemson away from also being a one-bid league, those conferences might be better off in the long run agreeing to a format that ensures two bids per season from 2026 to 2031.

As The Athletic’s Stewart Mandel noted recently, history suggests the Big Ten and SEC don’t need AQs to dominate the Playoff selections. But they do need them to create some new late-season TV inventory in the form of additional championship weekend CFP play-in games, which many administrators believe is the real impetus for the proposed change.

The problem for the ACC and Big 12 — aside from the fact they might not be able to create the same type of additional revenue-generating inventory from play-in games — is the potential perception hit that comes with formalizing their second-class status among the Power 4.

How damaging can that be? Think back to the four-team CFP. All involved agreed the most severe of unexpected consequences was the brand damage done to conferences that struggled to qualify for the Playoff. No power conference appeared in the CFP less often over the first 10 years than the Pac-12, and now it is no longer a power conference after 10 members bolted for other leagues.

If the Big Ten and SEC do attempt to push through an imbalanced, AQ-heavy CFP model, sources outside the Power 2 point to several possible obstacles the leagues could face beyond just the objections of their colleagues.

Threat of legal action

It’s hard to gauge how much appetite there would be within the group to start filing lawsuits against each other, but several athletic directors said they hoped their conference leadership was already talking to legal counsel.

Of course, who’s to say the lawsuits need to be filed by conferences or schools?

In the past 18 months, state attorneys general have shown a willingness to step in and protect their schools in cases where NCAA rules seemed to pose a threat to the hometown team.

West Virginia’s AG filed a lawsuit that essentially eliminated any transfer restrictions when a Mountaineers basketball player was not granted eligibility, and Tennessee’s AG responded with a lawsuit when the NCAA began scrutinizing the collective that was providing name, image and likeness deals to Volunteers athletes and recruits.

There are no SEC or Big Ten schools in West Virginia. Or North Carolina, Arizona, Kansas, Utah, etc.

Whether any legal challenge to the CFP agreement between the conferences would ultimately be successful is almost inconsequential. The simple filing of a lawsuit in a receptive home court could be enough to bog down the process and create CFP stagnation and uncertainty.

Political pressure

The college football postseason has attracted the ire of politicians in the past. In 1997, leaders of the Bowl Alliance (a multi-conference precursor to the Bowl Championship Series) were called to Washington, D.C., for a Senate hearing after No. 5 BYU was kept out of the Fiesta Bowl because the WAC was not part of the Bowl Alliance. In the early 2000s, Tulane president Scott Cowen led a coalition of schools that challenged the BCS’ exclusivity on the grounds that it was anticompetitive. In 2009, Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch asked the Justice Department to investigate the BCS when undefeated Utah missed out on the national championship between one-loss teams Florida and Oklahoma.

When the architects of the new 12-team format — SEC commissioner Greg Sankey among them — mapped out Playoff expansion, they did so with that history in mind. Former Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby, also part of that CFP subcommittee, frequently referenced antitrust concerns.

“These guys don’t want to get dragged up to Capitol Hill,” another administrator from outside the P4 said.

Nor is it a good time for college sports leaders to risk alienating federal lawmakers. Sankey and Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti have been among the many who have been lobbying legislators in Washington for a bill that will allow the NCAA and conferences to effectively regulate college sports, overriding myriad state laws and providing some antitrust protections.

With Republicans now in control of both chambers of Congress and the White House, the chances of getting that help have increased. The future of the CFP format has yet to become a federal issue, but so far the multiple-AQ idea does not appear to be a winning platform with fans (and constituents) — even those within Big Ten and SEC country.

ESPN

The network owns the media rights to the CFP through 2031. Generally, ESPN’s influence over the Playoff is overstated by conspiracy theorists, but the network is paying $7.8 billion to the CFP, and you’d better believe the opinions of its executives matter. The contract that runs from 2026-31 also does not require ESPN to pay more if the field expands to 14 teams, people briefed on the situation told The Athletic last year. It’s less clear that would remain the case if the field expanded to 16.

ESPN will be the exclusive home of the ACC through 2036, after recently picking up an option on that deal. The network also shares the rights to the Big 12 with Fox through 2030-31. Why would it want those conferences marginalized any more than they already have been by a CFP format stacked against them? Or encourage a CFP format that undercuts the event’s credibility with fans? Play-in tournaments that create more game inventory could also decrease the value of the regular season and be sold to non-ESPN broadcasters.

Working against the best interest of college football

The comments section and social media might not be the most scientifically sound gauge of public opinion, but it’s been hard to find many fans cheering for an SEC/Big Ten takeover.

“I understand the seeding issue, but I believe they are completely wrong about guaranteeing bids,” ESPN (and SEC Network) personality Paul Finebaum said last week on ESPN’s Get Up morning show. “Doing our show yesterday, even SEC fans are calling in saying they don’t like it. There’s something inherently wrong about stacking the deck before the season.”

The 33 football schools in the Big 12 and ACC have large, passionate fan bases and proud histories, even if their brand values fall short of Big Ten and SEC superpowers. If they view the CFP as an invitational intent on squeezing out their teams, why watch?

It may simply be too hard to make a case that a format that formalizes the Big Ten and SEC being twice as good as the Big 12 and ACC is good for the long-term health of college football. Conference commissioners report to their schools, and what’s best for their constituents is always top of mind. But as some commissioners have said during the past four years of CFP expansion drama, they have to think bigger than that.

“You come in here with both of those things in your mind, and I think that’s your responsibility as a guardian of the game,” ACC commissioner Jim Phillips said Tuesday. “For all of us, there’s been somebody before us and there’ll be somebody after us, and so whatever you do, you have to pay attention to both, and you have to serve your constituents. But you can’t be completely oblivious and not mindful about what’s good for college football, what’s good for the fans, and what are you hearing from them?”

(Photo: Rich von Biberstein / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

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