SEC balks at 24-team playoff, questions linger

SEC holdout – Commissioner Greg Sankey says the SEC has not embraced expanding the CFP beyond 12 teams, arguing the sport should judge expansion by its effect on the regular season. He remains open to exploring different sizes, even as the debate sharpens between coaches an

For college football teams chasing relevance every fall, the college football playoff is more than a tournament. It’s job security, a spotlight, and a rare route to staying alive in the national conversation.

So when the push to expand the CFP from 12 teams to 24 gathers steam, it lands with real pressure—especially on the league offices that decide how much the postseason is allowed to swallow the regular season.

That’s the backdrop for the SEC’s stance. and it’s why Commissioner Greg Sankey’s words on Monday landed like a pause button on a debate many thought was already moving. Asked about the conference’s reluctance to join power-conference peers backing a 24-team field. Sankey said. “Doesn’t bother me. ” via Pete Thamel of ESPN. He added, “People tell me that, but I don’t know if you pay attention in college sports. Positions seem to change a lot.”.

The SEC, at this point, has not taken a final position on what the ideal size of the CFP field should be. Sankey made that clear as he tried to separate the argument over numbers from the decision-making process.

“I’m not an opponent of 24 or 28,” Sankey said. “We have to inform the decision-making. I think we did a good job informing our position last year on 16. We’ll consider other ideas, certainly, this week and moving forward.”

What’s driving the SEC’s caution isn’t a blanket rejection—it’s timing and ripple effects. Sankey warned that if the field gets too large, too quickly, the impact on the regular season won’t be fully understood until the expanded format is actually in place.

“When professional sports have added to their postseason, it’s always been a small adjustment,” Sankey said. He pointed to the jump from “Four to 12 [in the CFP]” as “monumental. ” even if. in his view. it was “justifiable.” From there. the concern narrows to what expansion could change in the day-to-day stakes of the regular season.

Sankey argued that the value of a game depends on whether it meaningfully affects a team’s chance to win the whole thing.

“You want to be careful about how far you go. ” he said. “and that’s understanding the competitive impacts and maybe you bring more teams into the conversation. and you make a judgment because . . . a game that may not have that same type of leverage. if you will. or that same type of value because both teams could be in [the playoff].“.

He acknowledged that adding teams could still create value in the regular season—but only if it’s done in a way that holds up under scrutiny.

“That’s minimal,” Sankey said. “The ability to bring more teams into the conversation would have [to create] value in the regular season. Some of that you can quantify, some of that strikes me as a matter of judgment.”

Behind the conference-level debate is a reality no one in the sport can fully escape: the last team left out always feels wronged. Whatever the field size. the team on the wrong side of the cutoff has a grievance that it “could have run the table if it had only gotten a chance.” Notre Dame in 2025 is offered as an example of that kind of feeling.

As expansion grows, the frustration can shift forms. If the field becomes so large that the first team outside it is still effectively locked out of the title picture, the teams that do make the field could arrive already set for lopsided outcomes.

Sankey’s concern aligns with the broader argument already circling college football: more teams means more games where the outcome is decided early because the matchup gap is too wide.

The fallout from that imbalance is already familiar. Tulane and James Madison had “no business being in the field of 12,” and their first-round games “proved it,” according to the view presented in the ongoing debate.

The most extreme versions of this expansion conversation also raise a sharper question: what should the system be trying to reward?. The argument on the table leans toward building something closer to a structured league model—one that awards playoff spots based on wins and losses. with schedules shaped by true competitive balance instead of chasing dollars.

The proposal that follows is clear: “create an organized league (or leagues) that would award playoff spots based on wins and losses. with schedules driven not by chasing dollars or lining up patsies but true competitive balance.” It also floats a model where “maybe a series of leagues makes sense. with relegation and promotion available to all of the programs.”.

That connects to a larger grievance simmering in college football—chaos. The debate isn’t only about who gets in. It’s also about why people think the sport is chaotic now.

The argument presented draws a line between the current era of complaints and the reality that chaos has been there long before players’ compensation became a headline. Competing polls. unbalanced schedules. and the recurring sense that “the team that wins the ‘championship’ isn’t truly the best team” are listed as examples of disorder that predates today’s financial arguments.

A full overhaul, the argument goes, would eliminate much of the chaos. It points toward a super league—or “a series of leagues”—as a way to reshape power, governance, and bargaining.

Under that model, the discussion moves from scheduling and seeding to labor structure. It suggests a “multi-employer bargaining unit” that would “finally abandon the student-athlete facade and make the players members of a union. ” with rights. privileges. and obligations closer to “employee-athletes in the NFL.”.

There’s also a blunt acknowledgement that getting everyone to agree would be difficult, if not impossible. The largest programs and the power conferences “don’t want to risk losing their money or influence.”

And if the sport is serious about ending the chaos, the argument insists it shouldn’t start by restricting how players earn.

“It starts with the programs and the conferences realizing that the entire system is out of whack.”

That’s where the SEC’s holdout fits the shape of the argument. The suggestion is that the SEC’s hesitation on expanding the playoff field may be another signal of a larger fight about control—especially as college football looks more like a professional league.

“If that ever happens,” the argument says, “conferences like the SEC will lose the power and the money they have been able to hoard under the current system.”

For now, Sankey’s position leaves room for change without committing the SEC to it. “We’ll consider other ideas, certainly, this week and moving forward,” he said—while making clear the SEC wants expansion decisions built around measurable consequences, not momentum.

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