The rivalry between the Big Ten and the SEC is heating up as it moves to South Florida.
This year’s College Football Playoff executives are gearing up for their annual meeting ahead of the national championship game in Miami. The two dominant conferences remain at an impasse regarding the future of the postseason, potentially locking the playoff into its current structure for another season.
Despite the stalemate, the Big Ten is proposing a compromise to break the deadlock just before the College Football Playoff’s Jan. 23 deadline.
The conference is advocating for a 24-team playoff, regardless of whether automatic qualifiers are included. They are also prepared to temporarily settle for a 16-team format if other stakeholders agree to a 24-team system within three years, according to industry sources reported by CBS Sports.
This interim solution would give various conferences time to unravel one of the major challenges in college football: the complexity surrounding conference championship games, which are bound by lucrative media-rights agreements lasting through the decade. The prevailing thought is that power conferences would eliminate their championship games in the new playoff model.
This proposal could emerge as the College Football Playoff management committee — consisting of the 10 FBS commissioners and Notre Dame’s athletic director — convenes in Miami this Sunday.
For the moment, the positions are starkly defined, with the Big Ten seemingly isolated.
The ACC, Big 12, and SEC organizations continue to support a 16-team “5+11” configuration that guarantees automatic invitations to the five highest-ranked conference champions. The key barrier remains the Big Ten and SEC’s significant influence over CFP decision-making. If these two major conferences cannot find common ground, the playoff remains capped at 12 teams. Although ESPN, the CFP’s media partner until 2032, extended the deadline from Dec. 1 to Jan. 23, negotiations have progressed slowly.
The Big Ten has also investigated another version of a 24-team playoff — one featuring just a single automatic qualifier for the highest-ranked Group of Six champion, with the remaining 23 teams selected solely based on CFP rankings. This strategy aims to attract the SEC, yet the proposal has not been formally presented, according to sources familiar with the Big Ten’s strategy.
“There’s no push to expand simply for the sake of adding teams,” a prominent conference executive remarked to CBS Sports. “Rather, there is a significant caution in college sports, where short-term gains often obscure long-term consequences.”
The Big Ten previously mulled over a 24-team playoff format that would allow four automatic qualifiers for each of the four power conferences, which was shared informally with FBS members. The ACC and Big 12 have long advocated for equitable access, including qualifiers for every power conference. A 16-team format that included unequal automatic qualifiers — four for the Big Ten and SEC, and just two for the ACC and Big 12 — failed to gain traction last spring and summer.
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Earlier discussions by Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark suggested he would be willing to discuss a 24-team configuration “if we’re on equal footing with our colleagues.” Meanwhile, ACC commissioner Jim Phillips is still advocating for a 16-team format that offers equal automatic qualifiers or supports the 5+11 model that gained traction among SEC coaches and athletic directors last summer.
A 24-team playoff featuring equal opportunities for all power conferences could still appeal to SEC executives, several of whom were receptive to this concept last fall. One of the Big Ten proposals includes hosting 16 games on campus during the first two rounds, allowing the highest-ranked teams to earn eight byes.
Quarterfinals and semifinals would remain held at prominent bowl venues — such as the Fiesta, Peach, Sugar, Orange, and Cotton Bowls — while an expanded neutral site option could draw lower-tier bowls into the playoff system. Increasing the number of neutral-site games from seven to eleven could even make the idea of a Pop-Tarts Bowl playoff game seem feasible.
However, the notion of replacing conference championship games with preliminary playoff games appears to be losing appeal.
“Why subject our players to another fatigue-inducing game?” a high-ranking conference executive stated.
Nonetheless, a 16-team format could raise the demand for play-in games in a scenario devoid of conference championship games.
One idea for a 24-team playoff might involve rescheduling the Army vs. Navy Game from its traditional second Saturday in December to the first, usually set aside for conference championship matchups. The proposed playoff would start on the second Friday or Saturday of December.
The ACC expressed optimism last week that a 16-team expansion might still be approved for the upcoming season. However, Phillips recognized that deep-seated disagreements could thwart that possibility.
“We’re working collaboratively, and I’ve genuinely enjoyed our discussions,” Phillips mentioned to CBS Sports recently. “There’s no antagonism or shouting. Conversations have been professional, respectful, and to the point. We’re aware college football relies on us to devise a viable solution.”
The complexities persist as the CFP struggles to maintain a stable format long enough for genuine evaluation.
The playoff expanded from four teams to twelve in 2024. Straight seeding was implemented in 2025, along with new metrics promoted by the SEC introduced to the selection committee’s toolkit this fall. Beginning next fall, both the ACC and SEC will increase their league games from eight to nine, aligning with the Big Ten and Big 12 models. In essence, meaningful long-term comparative data remains scarce.
The most significant controversy in this new period arose when the CFP Selection Committee opted to remove Notre Dame from the top twelve in December, prompting the university to forgo participation in a lower-tier bowl game.
“Whether people like it or not, the twelve-team format has been effective both last year and this year, particularly after last year’s challenges with seeding,” an executive remarked. “There’s enough quality within the current setup to suggest that twelve is a suitable threshold for now, given our current practices.”
For the foreseeable future, it appears that the conferences will continue their pattern of disagreement, likely resulting in another season featuring a 12-team playoff.
