SEC will talk about having its own playoff

The money will be big. But I don't think ESPN, Fox, etc. are interested in investing BILLIONS on regional football. Maybe if they see it as a path to national interest, but not over the long-haul.

The SEC carries a big stick, so I gotta believe creating an SEC playoff and having writers throw out $100M annual payments/school is to make USC, Oregon, FSU, Clemson realize what they are missing out on. Jump on board or get left behind. IMO the SEC adding OU and Texas is just a bridge to adding Pac12 teams.

Just having teams from around the country does not make for a national audience. If you alienate fans of the schools left out, they're not suddenly going to cheer for one of the big schools. They'll lose interest in the sport and realize that there's no longer a reason to fork over money for that cable/streaming subscription. It's very short sighted to maximize profits now and not give a **** about what it'll do to your product down the road. But, that's the American way now so I fully expect that's what they'll do.
 
  • Like
Reactions: MugNight
The money will be big. But I don't think ESPN, Fox, etc. are interested in investing BILLIONS on regional football. Maybe if they see it as a path to national interest, but not over the long-haul.

The SEC carries a big stick, so I gotta believe creating an SEC playoff and having writers throw out $100M annual payments/school is to make USC, Oregon, FSU, Clemson realize what they are missing out on. Jump on board or get left behind. IMO the SEC adding OU and Texas is just a bridge to adding Pac12 teams.

Yeah...the "SEC" and its financial supporters would love to have USC and maybe Oregon from the PST. Adding Texas locked that massive state up...adding OU still seems odd to me. I mean OU fits in many many ways but going forward in the SEC world I could see OU struggle. Similar to a Nebraska to the Big 10 thing. Texas has the money to throw at problems until they come up with a solution (even if it happens accidentally). OU though...that is a school that had no choice but to accept the offer and hope for the best.
 
Last edited:
This kind of stuff will get eaten up down here in the Bible Belt. I remember in 2012 when UGA fans were clamoring that their close SEC championship loss to Bama was the “real national championship game”. Bama went on to steamroll ND for the title game a few weeks later.

College football fandom is different down here. Much more popular than the NFL. Sure people will watch the Saints or Falcons or Panthers but everyone has a favorite SEC team. Each state has a team or two to rally behind. It’s very tribal. I can’t explain it.

I don’t like it, but the ESPN spin zone juggernaut and the Just Means More machine will still make a lot of money and pull a lot of viewers if they go this route.
It will get eaten up in the south, and rejected almost everywhere else. SEC football with national audiences does and would make a ton of money. Turning it into a regional circle-jerk will be hilarious to watch all these dimwits scratching their heads over several years when their revenues aren't quite what they thought they would be and their donors are diverting their money to pay some kid $800k to play college football.

The idea that anybody in the SEC can think for a moment that splitting off to form regional club is somehow better than being THE big fish in a huge national pond tells me all I need to know about the future of college football. When the future of an industry is in the hands of the states that glow bright red in every map that shows [insert problem here] then that industry is probably on its way to death.
 
There have been rumors of something like this happening in the big ten as well however this author is jumping to the conclusion that the winner would play for a national title which the other conferences wouldn’t agree with. The actual idea being floated around is a 4 team tournament which would only add one more week of games to a few schools and would bring in a lot more eyeballs and would be a ratings boom. This is all predicated on the playoffs expanding past 4 which is inevitable but also has the issue of making some teams play 2-3 additional games then they already do. Some AD’s are against that idea but not any of the powerful ones.
 
There have been rumors of something like this happening in the big ten as well however this author is jumping to the conclusion that the winner would play for a national title which the other conferences wouldn’t agree with. The actual idea being floated around is a 4 team tournament which would only add one more week of games to a few schools and would bring in a lot more eyeballs and would be a ratings boom. This is all predicated on the playoffs expanding past 4 which is inevitable but also has the issue of making some teams play 2-3 additional games then they already do. Some AD’s are against that idea but not any of the powerful ones.

If you're going to expand conference championships, what's the need to expand the playoffs? Unless, of course, you just invite all conference champs only. But the SEC wouldn't go for that.
 
  • Like
Reactions: KidSilverhair
If you're going to expand conference championships, what's the need to expand the playoffs? Unless, of course, you just invite all conference champs only. But the SEC wouldn't go for that.
Because the conference tourney would crown the conference champion, the playoff would crown the national champion. Right now there is always at least 1 and usually 2 of the power 5 conferences left out and that is going to get changed during the next round of negotiations.
 
The money will be big. But I don't think ESPN, Fox, etc. are interested in investing BILLIONS on regional football. Maybe if they see it as a path to national interest, but not over the long-haul.

The SEC carries a big stick, so I gotta believe creating an SEC playoff and having writers throw out $100M annual payments/school is to make USC, Oregon, FSU, Clemson realize what they are missing out on. Jump on board or get left behind. IMO the SEC adding OU and Texas is just a bridge to adding Pac12 teams.
Yeah, in my mind I want to say "what is the difference between 2 super conferences with 24 teams and 4 or 5 regular conferences.

Then you go back to Money, Power and Control. If you did end up with just 2 super conferences, they control all aspects, force out the NCAA oversight, and manage and negotiate all deals. They control all the power of college sports. They control scheduling, rules, contracts, everything, from that point.

Is it good for the sport....probably not, especially if you are one of the schools outside. But they dont care about what is good for the sport, they care about money and power.

Im wondering more not if this will happen but when. Maybe not in the next couple years but maybe in the next decade. But who knows.
 
Because the conference tourney would crown the conference champion, the playoff would crown the national champion. Right now there is always at least 1 and usually 2 of the power 5 conferences left out and that is going to get changed during the next round of negotiations.

So...only conference champions eligible for the playoffs then?
 
  • Like
Reactions: KidSilverhair
So...only conference champions eligible for the playoffs then?
I mean, what’$ a conference champion$hip playoff for if it’$ not to find your champion and qualifier in the national playoff$?

I get what’s behind these ideas ($$$$), but it gets me how a lot of these big-time CFB people can’t even be internally consistent. “We don’t want divisions, it might mean our best team gets knocked out of the conference title by a lucky weakling from the other division” “conference championships shouldn’t mean anything for playoff consideration, we just want the best teams” “let’s put together a 4/8/10 team playoff for our own conference championship”

I’ve said this for a long time … the CFB playoff system should be a tournament of champions, only conference champs are allowed in. Conferences can pick their champion any way they want, divisions, two best teams, coin flip, vote of the members, I don’t care. You don’t like it, cause you went 11-1 and didn’t make your conference championship game? Too bad, you should have beaten the team ahead of you, and since they proved they’re better on the field, you don’t have an argument to get in. Giving teams that lose to someone who finished higher than them in their conference a “second chance” by playing in the CFB playoff just seems illogical to me. Can a Georgia rebound from losing to Bama in the SEC to beat them in a rematch in the playoff? Sure they can … but why should they get that chance? They lost when it counted. If you’re not the best team in your own conference, how can we call you the best team in the nation?

Obviously JMO, and I have zero say over CFB decisions, so whatever.
 
Last edited:
So...only conference champions eligible for the playoffs then?
The prevailing opinion is that the power 5 champs will get in and then 3 at large teams for an 8 team playoff. A 12 team playoff with byes has some traction as well but there is a concern for the number of games being played at that point and having to make a weird schedule to deal with the NFL. There is also a growing push to tell the non power 5 to pound sand and keep them out but we will see how much push back there is to that.
 
Just having teams from around the country does not make for a national audience. If you alienate fans of the schools left out, they're not suddenly going to cheer for one of the big schools. They'll lose interest in the sport and realize that there's no longer a reason to fork over money for that cable/streaming subscription. It's very short sighted to maximize profits now and not give a **** about what it'll do to your product down the road. But, that's the American way now so I fully expect that's what they'll do.

Unfortunately, Money & greed will win out. The elite schools can maximize their $ by winnowing the pool of schools that play at the highest level.

I don't think we are to many years away from only a handful of games each week are on network (free) TV. IMO it is just a matter of time before ESPN, FOX Sports, etc. are subscription based. Heck, the days of sport needing linear networks to broadcast their games is ending. Technology is making it very easy to reach people.
 
Smart move by the Comish of the SEC to get the feud/scandal between aTm and Bama, off of the headlines of every major sports broadcast, podcast and paper across the country.
So he doubles down with this SEC playoff garbage, distracting everyone from the well know fact that that the SEC has been buying players for years, now its just legal.

The SEC wanted the 12 team playoff to be announced, then after it was voted in, the league would announce that OU and UT would be joining the league. aTm got word of it, and spilled the beans, forcing the other leagues to vote down playoff expansion.
 
This is nothing more than Greg Snake-y trying to prod the other P5 conferences back to the CFP table. He steered the CFP expansion committee to 12 teams to help sell UT and OU to the SEC for just as good a chance to make the CFP versus staying in the Big 12 with a 4 game or 8 game CFP.
 
This is nothing more than Greg Snake-y trying to prod the other P5 conferences back to the CFP table. He steered the CFP expansion committee to 12 teams to help sell UT and OU to the SEC for just as good a chance to make the CFP versus staying in the Big 12 with a 4 game or 8 game CFP.
If making the playoffs was really the selling point it makes more sense for OUT to stay in the big 12. It’s a media dollars and prestige move nothing more
 

Latest posts

Help Support Us

Become a patron