Is 9 greater than 5+11?

Rather than deciding the future of college football together, the Big Ten and SEC now appear ready to battle.

Courtesy Nebraska Athletics

For most of 2025, the future of college football’s postseason seemed inevitable—expand to 16 teams, four auto-bids each for the SEC and Big Ten, two apiece for the Big 12 and ACC, one in case Notre Dame earns it, one for the rest of the conferences and a couple of at-larges. In a sport that has always been sharply divided between haves and have-nots, cans and cannots, this would’ve been an official stratification unlike anything we’ve seen. Two conferences would solidify their power, the two with any chance of challenging them would concede they deserve less and, while shocking when you boil it all the way down, this structure probably matches majority opinion.

And it seemed likely to happen…until the SEC held its annual meetings in Destin, Florida, near the end of May. Given the microphone—and the ears of the football world because what else is happening then?—SEC commissioner Greg Sankey made it known the conference wasn’t necessarily pushing for automatic bids alongside the Big Ten. In fact, Sankey let it be known, the SEC coaches favored five automatic bids for conference champions and at-large bids after that, basically the system we have now and it works with any size field.

Again with all eyes on the SEC this week as it held its four-day media days extravaganza in Atlanta, Sankey made the point even more strongly:

“We had a different view coming out of Destin around the notion of allocations,¹ if you will, and I think you'll probably hear that again from our coaches. The Big Ten has a different view. That's fine. We have a 12-team playoff, five conference champions. That could stay if we can't agree.”

Maybe you read that differently than me, but I read it as instead of co-conspirators in determining the future of the College Football Playoff, the Big Ten and SEC might actually be combatants for the next few months.

So, let’s look at this as a potential battle. It’s more fun that way, anyway.