College football, keeper of the best regular season in sports, has upped its offseason game in recent years. From conference realignment to transfer decisions to settlements of antitrust lawsuits, developments from February through August are increasingly impacting what transpires on the field.
The latest example: an attempt by the SEC and Big Ten to expand the College Football Playoff from 12 teams to 14 and allow multiple automatic qualifiers (AQs) from each power conference. Both changes would take effect for the 2026 season, the first year of the event’s next media contract cycle with ESPN.
Look closely, and you can trace the implications across the country and the decade.
Changing the postseason isn’t really about changing the postseason. For the two richest and most influential conferences, it’s a means to unlock revenue in the regular season. For everyone else, including the Four Corners schools that joined the Big 12 six months ago, the planned adjustments to the CFP could produce an on-campus wallop well into the 2030s.
The root cause of any potential damage is a familiar one: the never-ending quest to extract every last cent from college football’s cash machines, ESPN and Fox.
The SEC and Big Ten want access to more revenue, in part to offset a new expense: sharing approximately $20 million annually with athletes. (The revenue-sharing era is expected to begin this summer if a judge approves the settlement of an antitrust lawsuit.)
But ESPN is not obligated to increase CFP revenue payments if the event expands to 14 teams, according to a Yahoo report. In fact, there’s little evidence to suggest ESPN wants to expand the playoff or create multiple AQs per conference.
So the Big Ten and SEC seemingly must look elsewhere for new revenue. The obvious option: Create more value in their regular-season inventory.
That mission is best accomplished by 1) the SEC adding a ninth league game, and 2) the conferences uniting to form an in-season scheduling series.
In theory, a package of marquee inter-conference games would be well received by the respective media partners, Fox (Big Ten) and ESPN (SEC).
Here’s the problem, as the SEC and Big Ten see it: High-level matchups will lead to more regular-season losses; more regular-season losses could play poorly with the CFP selection committee; and that resistance could impact the number of at-large bids granted to each conference.
But if the SEC and Big Ten remove the committee from the selection process, they need not fret over an extra non-conference loss.
How could they limit the committee’s influence? By creating multiple AQs. Each league would designate its CFP participants based on intra-conference performance. The committee would be tasked with seeding the teams, not selecting them.
Put another way: The SEC and Big Ten create the scheduling series as a means of unlocking more revenue; and they create the AQs (and the expanded field) as protection against losses incurred during the inter-conference series.
Got it?
But there’s damage downstream — in the ACC and Big 12.
If SEC and Big Ten teams are committed to nine conference games and one inter-conference matchup per year, there are just two openings left on their 12-game schedules. What are the chances they would agree to play quality competition in the ACC or Big 12?
Remember, non-conference losses could impact CFP seeding.
Also, ACC and Big 12 schools would (understandably) insist on playing home-and-home series, thereby increasing the risk level for the SEC and Big Ten teams.
And guess what: There are loads of SEC-Big 12 games under contract.
The Four Corners schools alone have 25 games on the books against the SEC and Big Ten over the next eight years, according to FBschedules.com.
Arizona has home-and-home series with Nebraska and Alabama.
Arizona State has Florida, LSU, Texas and Texas A&M in home-and-home fashion.
Colorado has Northwestern, Florida and Missouri.
Utah has Arkansas, Wisconsin, UCLA and LSU.
Those games might be in jeopardy if the SEC and Big Ten agree to their in-season series. Why would LSU, for example, visit Salt Lake City when it has nine SEC games and a Big Ten crossover date with Penn State or Washington, Wisconsin or USC?
Hotline prediction: If the SEC and Big Ten finalize their partnership, they will use a fraction of the resulting windfall to buy their way out of the games scheduled against Big 12 and ACC opponents.
Which leaves teams in those conferences with gaping holes in their schedules.
Sure, they could fill the voids with FCS teams or Group of Five opponents. But it would make vastly more sense for the Big 12 and ACC to combine forces and create their own scheduling alliance.
It won’t command big dollars. It might not add a dime to the current media rights contracts for either conference. (The ACC has an all-in deal with ESPN; the Big 12 partners with ESPN and Fox.) But it would offer better competition for players, more interesting games for the fans and enhanced cost containment for the schools.
Home-and-home series don’t cost anything. Add the cancellation penalties collected from the SEC and Big Ten schools and the situation, while deeply unfortunate, would at least become revenue-positive.
But buying one-off home games against Group of Five and FCS programs is expensive — more than $1 million per game in some cases. And if they know Big 12 and ACC schools are desperate, the price could rise.
Texas is scheduled to visit Arizona State on Sept. 11, 2032, but it’s easy to envision the Longhorns being replaced by Boston College or NC State. Similar situations could arise on other Big 12 and ACC campuses.
When butterflies flap their wings in Birmingham, Alabama, and Rosemont, Illinois, the impact across college football is increasingly significant.
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