College Football Playoff No Clear Path Forward

The future format of the college football playoff seems to have no clear path forward following last week's SEC meetings in Florida. All of the conference commissioners must decide on a future format for the 2026 playoffs and beyond by December 1st.

The issues at hand are whether to expand from 12 teams to 16 and who gets in. If it is a forgone conclusion that the college football playoff will expand to 16 then there are three plans to consider. First, is the 4,4,2,2,3,1 plan where the SEC and Big Ten get 4 automatic qualifying teams in the playoffs every year. The ACC and Big 12 would get two. There would be 3 at large entries and 1 Group of 6 team.

The other plan gaining steam is the 5+11 plan. That is where the 5 highest rated conference champions get in and a committee selects 11 at large teams. A third option is to ranked the 16 best teams in the country and those are your playoff teams.

Going into the SEC meetings it was believed the Big Ten and SEC were in lock step with the plan that would give them 4 automatic qualifiers. The other conferences balked at that and now want the 5+11 plan. Then Sankey said he never wanted automatic qualifiers in the first place. What?

To make matters worse, AD's seem to want one plan where they can get more revenue but coaches like a different plan where they think they have a better shot at playing for something big.

The future college football playoff is a mess right now. But we are here to sort it out everyday. In fact we have been known to come up with a plan or sulution of our own once in a while. Tune in each weekday to Craig Shemon and Company from 2-6 pm on ESPN Southwest Florida.