As college football administrators deliberate over whether to expand the current 12-team playoff to 16 teams, monopoly-minded Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti has reportedly conferred with the SEC about an even more dramatic transformation, kicking around the idea of a 24- or even 28-team playoff bracket.
According to the reports, Petitti first ran this potential 24- or 28-team playoff by his own conference's athletic directors last week, and then looped in officials at the SEC. None of the other conferences were included in the conversations. "It's frustrating that these topics can't be discussed behind the scenes and brought out to the public once they've been vetted," one SEC administrator said. I'm sure part of the frustration there is not having time to grease the PR skids with propaganda about why it would be good and just for the Big Ten and SEC to have a plurality of automatic qualifying spots while the rest of the FBS conferences fight for table scraps.
Ultimately, that's what this comes down to: how many automatic qualifying spots can each conference guarantee for themselves. Currently, in the proposed 16-team playoff, both the Big Ten and the SEC want four AQs apiece. As the two conferences further consolidate their power over the sport, it makes sense that they would demand a larger cut of the pie—just like how the mafia works! But why stop there? Go ahead and announce a 64-team bracket; that's more than enough space to get the entire Big Ten and SEC an automatic bid. Never again will Vanderbilt have to demean itself by actually playing games. Never again will Michigan State or Ole Miss have to claw their way to mediocrity, only to settle for a place in the Alamo Bowl or whatever. Who needs competition and regular-season proof of sporting merit when there's money to make?
Meanwhile, the big question this proposal conveniently ignores is the fate of the bowls. The bowls are a lot like shopping centers or the American Constitution: things we are casually indifferent toward until the time comes to tear them down. If there was one takeaway from this past college football season, it's that the bowls are now a complete afterthought, a domain solely for true college football sickos and maybe a few Pop-Tart masochists. As the playoff gets bigger and bigger, with even more arbitrary standards for entry, the entire regular season might go that way as well.
