AUBURN | In my version of a perfect college football postseason, we’d still have the Big Eight, Southwest and Pac-10, and the best teams from the era of regional conferences would meet for a 16-team playoff to determine the national champion.
A mix of the old and the new. It would be sweet, sweet perfection.
But those days are long gone. It’s been three decades since those conferences existed in close to their original forms.
We’re in the era of the power conferences. Most refer to it as the Power 4, but the Power 2+2 would be more accurate because it’s the SEC and Big Ten that are running the show.
And it’s the SEC and Big Ten that are going to set the future of the college football postseason on their terms.
More changes are coming in 2026. The changes will be driven by one factor and one factor only: The Almighty Dollar.
That sounds like a bad thing, and perhaps it will be. But it’s also a practical thing. The era of the power conferences coincides with the era of NIL and the upcoming era of revenue sharing. That’s not a coincidence.
Costs are soaring and college athletic departments need to find more revenue. Almost every decision they make now and into the near future will be guided by this need.
The inaugural 12-team playoff was a success but the SEC and Big Ten want changes and have the power to implement them starting in 2026, which has been detailed in a series of stories from Ross Dellenger of Yahoo Sports including here and here.
The most controversial of the changes includes increasing the field to 14 or 16 teams and giving the SEC and Big Ten four automatic bids, the ACC and Big 12 two, the top Group of 5 team one and a wildcard that would go to Notre Dame if it’s in the top 14 of the final CFP poll.
Last season’s 12-team playoff field included four Big Ten teams, three SEC, two ACC, one Big 12, one Group of 5 and Notre Dame.
That many guaranteed spots is problematic, but it’s also understandable considering 20 of the last 23 national champions have come from the SEC and Big Ten. And those 20 championships were won by nine different schools.
This outcome is almost inevitable when you concentrate so many successful programs in just two conferences. It means if either the ACC or Big 12 has three good teams, then one of those is going to be watching from home.
Same goes for a really good fifth-place team in the SEC or Big 10 — maybe.
Which brings me to the parts of the potential new plan that I really like.
For starters, momentum is building for the SEC to go to nine conference games, which means a 6-3 model with three permanent opponents.
It also likely means a SEC-Big Ten football series, which could eventually be sold as a package to create more revenue.
The new format would allow conferences to determine how they choose their automatic qualifiers. In the SEC, that could mean the team that finishes third playing the sixth-place team and fourth vs. fifth in two play-in games. That would extend potential playoff spots to the top six in the league, which could benefit a lot of teams including Auburn.
The Tigers’ average finish in the SEC over the last 15 seasons is approximately 6.9. Take away the last four losing seasons and it was 5.5 from 2010-2020.
The other major change is seeding the tournament by the final CFP poll instead of giving the top four seeds to the Power 4 conference winners, which should have a lot of support.
Are the changes perfect? No. But they’re practical and there’s plenty of reasons to be excited about the future of college football.
Now, let’s just get more of those games in home stadiums where they belong.
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In today’s musical journey, we go back 26 years to the day a musical artist won the first of four consecutive Grammy Awards for Best Male Vocal Performance. On Feb. 24, 1999, Lenny Kravitz won his first Grammy for his hit single “Fly Away,” which peaked at No. 12 on the Billboard 100 but topped the charts in the UK and Iceland. He continued his Grammy winning streak with 2000’s “American Woman,” 2001’s “Again” and 2002’s “Dig In.” The streak set records for the most wins in the Best Male Vocal Performance category and the most consecutive wins in one category by a male performer. “Fly Away” was written by Kravitz after the completion of his fourth album, but a friend convinced him to add it to the album after hearing the song. Kravitz had two top 10 hits in “Again,” which peaked at No. 4, and 1991’s “It Ain’t Over ’til It’s Over,” which peaked at No. 2. He had several other popular songs in 1989’s “Let Love Rule,” 1991’s “Always on the Run” and 1993’s “Are You Gonna Go My Way.” He has appeared in 18 movies and T.V. shows including 2009’s Precious and the first two installments of The Hunger Games in 2012 and 13.
Leonard Albert Kravitz was born in New York City in 1964. His father, Sy Kravitz, was an NBC T.V. producer and mother, Roxie Roker, an actress. He is a second cousin of NBC’s Al Roker. Kravitz starting playing drums and guitar in grade school and attended many shows and concerts in N.Y. The family moved to Los Angeles in 1974 when his mother got a role on The Jeffersons T.V. show. Kravitz sang in the choir in L.A. and taught himself to play bass guitar and the piano, He attended Beverly Hills High School with Nicolas Cage and Slash. In 1985, Kravitz decided to record his first album on his own under the name Romeo Blue. Three years later the album was complete and after shopping it to labels, Kravitz chose Virgin Records over four other offers. He also decided to release it under his own name. Kravitz was married to the actress Lisa Bonet from 1987-93 and they had a daughter, Zoe Kravitz, who is an actress. Kravitz has released 12 albums and sold over 40 million records. He is currently on tour after releasing his latest album in 2024.
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