Behind the inevitability of the Big Ten and SEC gaining access, revenue, power in College Football Playoff

It was never going to be easy formalizing the moment the Big Ten and SEC were partners. Certainly, the leagues themselves wouldn’t always admit to being chummy. For a long time, the conferences were rivals in every sense — recruiting, championships, TV contracts.

In a famous 2007 letter to fans, former Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany’s took a not-so-veiled shot at the SEC. Delany compared the two leagues at the time, saying there were “appropriate balances when mixing academics and athletics” in the Big Ten.  

At the time, the SEC was about to put a death grip on college football — one that has lasted to this day with the conference winning 13 of the last 17 national championships. At the same time, the Big Ten was, well, losing its grip.

Little of that rancor still exists as we step out to the edge of a new College Football Playoff. In fact, it will be a bigger, ground-breaking CFP largely because of the combined swagger of the Big Ten and SEC. A partnership between the two leagues announced earlier this month as an “advisory group” went way deeper.

The depth of that combined power was laid bare at the latest College Football Playoff Management Committee meeting when the Big Ten and SEC reportedly proposed multiple automatic qualifiers for their leagues beginning in 2026. Conference commissioners emerging from the meeting confirmed that field expansion to 14 teams — or as many as 16 teams — starting in 2026 was a possibility, this before the CFP has even played its first season as a 12-team bracket in 2024.

So far, this lobbying from the Big Ten and SEC is not so much an ultimatum but an inevitability. Realignment and consolidation have left the nation’s two most dominant conferences with most of the best brands. The resulting…

Source link : https://www.cbssports.com/college-football/news/behind-the-inevitability-of-the-big-ten-and-sec-gaining-access-revenue-power-in-college-football-playoff/

Author : Dennis Dodd

Publish date : 2024-02-28 16:29:39

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