As the powers that be in college football try to agree on the College Football Playoff structure that will start in 2026, shots are being fired across the bow.
In May, just before the SEC’s annual spring business meetings, SEC commissioner Greg Sankey openly stumped for a 16-team model with four automatic bids each for his conference and the Big Ten, two each for the ACC and Big 12 and one for the Group of Five conferences with three at-large bids.
“If you actually go back and do the research, that kind of format could cost us positions depending on the number of teams,” Sankey said. “I don’t see the critics actually digging into understand that reality. I don’t see the critics actually analyzing, like I just described, how schedules are evaluated. Critics can run to the microphones and share their opinions. We’re trying to find a format to determine — whatever number it is — the best teams in college football. Where we are right now is we have used a political process inside a room to come to decisions about football. We should be using football information to come to football decisions.”
It was met with much pushback, as Sankey alluded to, especially from Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark, though he kept things respectful. In his press conference Thursday, Ohio State athletic director Ross Bjork took a different approach – he thinks everyone should take a breath.
“The decision-making authority rests with the commissioners in the room, and then they bring that to the governing board of the CFP, which is presidents that represent all ten of the conferences,” Bjork said. “So to me, debating it in public, I don’t think that does any good. I think what we need to do from our perspective is we need to take a step back, we need to keep engaging with our colleagues across (college football).”
With the public back-and-forth between Sankey and the Big 12 and ACC commissioners, there’s been a lot of confusion over what the leading CFP formula will be. Alongside the 4-4-2-2-1 model endorsed by Sankey, the top competition is a 5-11 model where the four power conference champions and top Group of Five champion get automatic bids and the remaining 11 seeds are all at-large berths.
For Bjork, these aren’t conversations that should be playing out in the public sphere, because they can sow confusion among college football decision-makers.
“One week it was 4-4-2-2-1 had a lot of traction,” Bjork said. “That was out publicly, and then the next week it was 5-11. But have we accomplished anything yet? No, so let’s play it out where it should be played out in these conversations, where the authority lies.”
The Big Ten has remained mostly mum on the subject of playoff expansion, though Ohio State head coach Ryan Day did say earlier in June that he believes the conference should get four automatic bids as laid out in the 4-4-2-2-1 model. One person who’s been completely silent is Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti, but it’s not something that bothers Bjork.
“We’re confident in the commissioners. We’re confident in Commissioner Petitti,” Bjork said. “We’ll figure this out, but I think we need to all just take a step back and then come back together at the right time to fix it. ‘Cause we know we can fix it. We just have to come back together.”
Bjork met with a multitude of SEC athletic directors at the annual National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics (NACDA) convention this past weekend, and the CFP expansion was a frequent topic of conversation. But he insists the talks continue in those types of settings and not before microphones and media.
“I saw a lot of the SEC ADs this week,” Bjork said. “We had those conversations. And so, yeah, could we be more vocal about some positioning? Perhaps, but at the same time, there’s so much work that has to be done. So look, we believe in what we believe in. We’re willing to listen, and I think that’s a position that we have to take. But playing it out in public and staking claim, what good does that do?”
The deadline for the conference commissioners and the CFP to reach a decision on the new format is Dec. 1.
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