As the College Football Playoff undergoes potential changes this off-season, Big 12 athletic directors seem united on this issue: each league should only receive one auto-bid.
TCU athletic director Mike Buddie commented on the CFP on Monday, and according to The Athletic senior writer Chris Vannini, said, “I feel you should earn your way into the tournament. If it’s going to be an invitational, call it the College Football Invitational. The Big 12 AD’s are adamant that it should be one (auto-bid max per league).”
This comes one month after Yahoo Sports’ Ross Dellenger dropped a bombshell report on the future of the College Football Playoff and what it might mean for the future of the sport.
Among the bevy of proposed changes that are likely to come to pass—such as further CFP expansion and an overhaul to Conference Championship Weekend—is the introduction of multiple automatic bids for each Power Four Conference.
However, the new model would give both the Big Ten and SEC double the auto-bids of the Big 12 and ACC. In a proposed 14-team model, it would look like this:
Proposed 4-4-2-2-1+1 CFP Model
- SEC (4 Auto-Bids)
- Big Ten (4 Auto-Bids)
- Big 12 (2 Auto-Bids)
- ACC (2 Auto-Bids)
- Group of Five (1 Auto-Bid)
- 1 At-Large Bid
- First-Round Bye for Top Two Overall Seeds
In a vacuum, two auto bids for the Big 12 is a win. But if it comes at the cost of more than half of the CFP field being guaranteed to Big Ten and SEC teams, is it really worth it?
Big 12 and ACC React
According to Dellenger, several Big 12 and ACC administrators are not in support of a format with so many automatic bids going to the SEC and Big Ten.
Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark told Dellenger that he’s been exploring “predictive analysis” on what different playoff models would mean for conference participation if applied to recent playoff formats, adding he’ll be, “armed with data.”
And now, we have one Big 12 athletic director confirming that the 16 leaders in this league are united in their opposition to the move. We’ll see what’s next as the college football landscape continues to change dramatically.
