I looked at the last 3 season end of year CFP Rankings and in all 3 seasons, the SEC comes out with 6, 7 and 4 Teams. Big 12 only got 1 team in 2 of the 3 years. They had the anomaly in 2022 with TCU's one-hit wonder. Big 10 had 4, 5 and 5 Teams. ACC had 3, 1 and 2 Teams. Bottom line, why give the ACC and Big 12 two guaranteed spots in the playoff each year when history shows they aren't consistently strong enough? IMO, the 5-11 format with 4 conference champions plus G5 guaranteed a spot in the playoffs (not guaranteed a bye) and committee rankings finalize the remaining 11 teams with seeding dictating the 2 teams that get a bye.
If they go with that 16 team format, then the 2 play-in games occur the second weekend of December, bringing the total teams to 14 starting the weekend of Dec 20th. Top 2 teams get a bye (likely the Big 10 and SEC Conf Champs) till Jan 1. At that point, it's top 8 teams in 4 bowl games similar to last year. I hear all the talk about playing those Jan 1 games at university stadiums but that seems unlikely given bowl financial strength.
I'm good with this and it feels like the SEC / Texas likely wins in this model. If they go with this 5-11 model, it sounds like 8 SEC game schecule is most likely to avoid canibalizing each other, given how strong SEC is from top to bottom. As long as we can keep RRR and A&M game in 8-game SEC format, this seems like a good compromise. No need to protect Arkansas game as an annual tradition.
Curious if others have a strong opinion re: number of teams in CFP, number of guaranteed spots versus at large spots, # of games played in SEC, etc. Fun stuff being debated this week.
By comparison, look at basketball and baseball for other examples where SEC has dominated, using rankings and seedings to dictate the bracket. No need for more AQs to SEC and Big 10 IMO.
Hook em!! π§‘π€πΌπ
https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/45350954/greg-sankey-talks-sec-coaches-16-team-playoff-model-notes-problematic-timing