By Ryan Bologna
The college football world is changing rapidly. Whether it is the introduction of NIL or Texas and Oklahoma going to the SEC, the landscape has and will continue to change over the next decade.
The current format for the college football playoff is in place until 2025. After that, who knows what could happen. Changing to a 12-team format was considered in February, but the current four-team format is here to stay until the current contract expires. In all likelihood, the playoff will change in 2026.
Power conferences will likely try to create leverage to get the format they prefer in the next couple of years. This will influence conference realignment and how each conference formats its season. The SEC is the most powerful conference in college football, so it could take matters into its own hands depending on what is decided for 2026. What would that look like? Let’s investigate further.
SEC commissioner Greg Sankey was part of the committee that proposed the 12-team format and is upset it did not go through. The SEC already made a powerful move with Oklahoma and Texas for 2025, which gives the conference the most leverage of any when it comes to the playoff format in 2026. Sankey definitely wants expansion, and the increased power that the SEC will have could influence the decision. But what if Sankey doesn’t get what he wants and the playoff either doesn’t expand or just expands by a couple of teams? That is where the idea of the SEC staging its own playoff comes in.
We know that Sankey will consider all possibilities, as evidenced by the additions of Oklahoma and Texas. While the schedule will change due to these additions anyway, that could be the perfect excuse to start mapping out what an SEC playoff format would look like. Since the league will have 16 schools by 2025, an eight-team playoff is brought up most often.
There is no doubt that other leagues don’t want to see this happen. The ACC, Big Ten, and Pac-12 formed “The Alliance” to slow down these types of changes. It is thought that those three conferences were driving forces in the playoff staying with the current four-team format. The question is would those other conferences find a way to get out of playing SEC teams in a championship if the SEC staged its own playoff format? The SEC is viewed as the strongest football conference, so would the SEC care, knowing that in a playoff format many would view the SEC champion as the real champion anyway?
There are a ton of factors to the decision regarding the college football playoff in 2026, and any little decision by each conference will create ripple effects. The only thing we know for sure is that nothing is certain about the foreseeable future of college football.
Photo Credit: Jamie Lamor Thompson
