College football could be headed for a 16-team playoff, and for UCLA, a team playing in the Big Ten, it would help a lot. 10 wins and you’re in.
ESPN’s Heather Dinich reported on recent developments regarding the College Football Playoff.
“A 16-team College Football Playoff model featuring the top five conference champions and 11 at-large teams is gaining traction following SEC spring meetings this week,” Dinich wrote. “But the next step in playoff expansion for 2026 and beyond will depend on how quickly the sport’s leaders can make a flurry of decisions.
“A critical component is the SEC’s choice between staying at eight league games or moving to nine, a topic ACC sources say could be revisited in their league after years of being dormant if prompted by playoff expansion. The linchpin to those scheduling decisions is one thing every conference seems to agree on: the need for clarity about how the CFP selection committee ranks its teams, starting with how strength of schedule is determined and applied.”
SEC commissioner Greg Sankey had spoken on the ranking system at the SEC spring meetings on Thursday.
“[I] do think there is a need for change,” Sankey said. “How do you explain some of the decisions that have been made? I’ll go back to Georgia a year-and-a-half ago. Georgia was a two-time defending national champion. They lost one game in our championship game against Alabama. Not a lot of noise about them. Being undefeated was never an expectation for being selected into the four-team. That just isn’t perfect criteria. Otherwise, North Dakota State would be in.
“How do you make those decisions? It’s hard, and we trust the committee to do that, and I respect the people in there, so this isn’t a criticism of the people. This is wanting to understand the decisions. We have to have better clarity on the criteria that inform those decisions.”
The nine-game threshold seems to be the holdup with the SEC not willing to give up their mid-season tune-up game.
“If we’re not confident that the decision-making about who gets in and why and what are the metrics around it, it’s going to be really hard for some of my colleagues to get to the nine games,” Texas A&M athletic director Trev Alberts said. “We’ve got a timeline that’s getting tight, and we recognize that. It seems like everything is coming to a head. In a way, it’s a little bit frustrating, in another way, it feels good because eventually, it feels like we’re actually going to get some of this dealt with.”
If the SEC does not adopt a nine-game schedule, UCLA will have one more hurdle to leap in terms of defeating a conference opponent. Regardless, the model provides a clear standard for qualification that will not show favoritism to anyone in theory.
The truth is that the Big Ten will always get the nod over the ACC unless it’s Florida State, Clemson, or Miami, same as the Big 12. Thus, all UCLA needs to do is schedule weak non-conference opponents, win most of their games, and then the Bruins would make an impossible dream a reality without having to worry about auto bids.
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