The future of the College Football Playoff will be one of the main topics as the SEC spring meetings get underway on Tuesday in Destin, Florida. The Big Ten, ACC, and Big 12 want the College Football Playoff expanded from 12 to 24 teams starting in 2027, but USA Today national college football writer Matt Hayes says SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey is only willing to expand to 16 teams.
“They got a chance to say we are ‘no,’ we are not going to 24 teams, we are either staying at 12 or we are going to 16 teams, that's it, end of story,” Hayes said.
Sankey told reporters Monday night that expanding the C-F-P from four to 12 was justifiable and college football leaders should be careful with how far it goes.
A CBS Sports survey shows SEC coaches and athletic directors are split on a 24-team college football playoff format. Georgia’s Kirby Smart and Tennessee’s Josh Heupel are two coaches who have publicly supported the idea of a 24-team playoff. Kirby has said it would be good for the fans.
Hayes says on major issues, the SEC is usually 100% for it or against it, but when talking with reporters on Monday, Sankey, there was no unanimous vote when the CFP moved from 4 to 12 teams.
The Big Ten believes it has leverage, since its teams have won the last three national championships. But Hayes says the SEC has the much higher TV viewership, and a 24-team playoff will only hurt the regular season.
“Television ratings between the SEC and everyone else is literally like a Grand Canyon-sized chasm between them,” Hayes said.
Sankey not only wants to protect the value of the regular season, but he also wants to keep the SEC Championship game going.
The championship games for the four major conferences are worth a combined 200 million dollars annually.
Would a match-up between a 9-seed and a 24-seed in a 24-team college football playoff generate the same kind of revenue? That’s a big question.
Sankey didn’tanticipate a decision on a 24-team college football playoff during this week’s meetings.
Kiffin is facing a possible reprimand
LSU football coach Lane Kiffin could be reprimanded for comments he made to Vanity Fair. Kiffin told the magazine that when he was coaching at Ole Miss, recruits told him their grandparents did not want them to live in Oxford because of its ties to the Confederacy. Kiffin has defended his comments by telling USA Today that people are not reading the actual words in the article.
Kiffin said the comments were made by grandparents, and that is not his opinion.
In the Vanity Fair article, Kiffin also added that the parents of LSU recruits are pleased to see it’s so segregated.
NIL Rules
College athletics is waiting on Congress to pass legislation that would provide uniform rules for the NIL landscape. But waiting for Congress to pass positive legislation is not a wise game plan.
Georgia President Jere Morehead has said maybe it’s time the SEC creates its own NIL regulations and enforces them.
Morehead has said they can’t allow for the Wild West to continue any longer.
Yahoo reports Texas Senator Ted Cruz and Washington Senator Maria Cantwell are working on federal legislation to regulate NIL and put more rules in place to restrict player movement.
It will be interesting to see if the SEC will take any action on LSU coach Will Wade’s attempt to bring several professional players from overseas to play college basketball at LSU.
