With time ticking down until the start of the college football season, the upcoming College Football Playoffs format looks to be in a bit of chaos.
So much so that the CFB Playoff committee brought in, yes, a mathematician from Google to help figure things out.
That’s where we’re at with just 66 days until the start of the college football season.
On Feb. 21, ESPN’s Heather Dinich reported that SEC commissioner Greg Sankey and Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti were both in favor of changes to “the way teams are seeded in the 12-team College Football Playoff” this fall. With the original report coming fairly close to the end of the 2024 season, it seemed like there was plenty of time to get things done and agree on the way the format should be changed for the 2025 season.
But now, with no agreement in place, time is running out to get something done.
Dinich dropped a bombshell report on Wednesday that CFP leaders are still “mulling over” what the format should look like, following a two-day conference in North Carolina this past week. There appears to be a disagreement with the way things should be handled between the SEC and the Big Ten, the two current leaders in the college football landscape.
“The Big Ten and the SEC have the bulk of control of the next iteration of the playoff, but the two conferences haven’t been on the same page recently in terms of what that should look like,” Dinich writes.
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What the SEC Wants
The SEC held spring meetings in May in Destin, FL, with one of the big topics being the CFP format. Coaches from the 16 SEC teams weighed in on the decision, and it looks like there was good support for a 16-team model that would include the five highest-ranked conference champions and 11 at-large teams. Dinich notes that the SEC’s model was attractive to other conferences, unless your conference was named the Big Ten. Leaders of that conference were reportedly “surprised” by this action.
The Big Ten reportedly “wouldn’t even consider” the 5-automatic, 11-at-large model unless the ACC and SEC move to a nine-game conference schedule, with both conferences currently sitting at an eight-game conference slate.
That’s where the Google representative comes into play.
Dinich’s reporting states that SEC commissioner Greg Sankey is looking at a wide range of variables that could come into play if the SEC were to move to a nine-game conference schedule, and much of the conversation this week in North Carolina was “spent studying metrics, including strength of schedule.”
Rich Clark, the executive director for the College Football Playoffs, reportedly brought in an expert mathematician from Google to help the group of 10 FBS commissioners (plus Notre Dame’s athletic director, Pete Bevacqua) better understand the pros and cons of the options on the table.
“Pretty much everything’s on the table, and they’re taking a good look at it all of it,” Clark said of the different format possibilities, according to ESPN. “So, I wouldn’t say there’s a leading contender right now for them, but they’re taking a fresh look at it.”
“I don’t know if there’s any hurdles they have to get over; I think they just want to make sure they get it right,” Clark said, via ESPN. “That’s going to be six years of format that they’re deciding, and rushing to a bad decision is not in any of our best interests. They want to make sure they look at all the options and understand what the pros and cons are and make the best decision they can rather than trying to rush to something that may not suit us for the next phase of the CFP.”
The College Football Playoff format is a messy situation right now, which is concerning with the season just about two months away. But Dinich’s reporting does state that Clark believes that a conclusion will be met by the time the season is upon us.
Who knows, maybe the Google math expert might be the one to save the college football playoffs… depending on which side of the debate you’re on.
For more detailed reporting on Clark’s conversations following the big two-day meeting this week, check out Heather Dinich’s report for ESPN here.
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