The first season of the 16-team SEC has proven to be must-watch television nearly every week. Last Saturday’s prime-time Georgia–Tennessee game became the league’s fourth matchup this season to garner at least 10 million viewers. Only two SEC games reached that mark at this point in the past three seasons combined.
For that, the conference can thank the 12-team College Football Playoff. Without it, this would be a much different season for the league.
Were the four-team CFP still in effect this year, the SEC would likely be one Texas loss from missing the Playoff for the first time in the event’s 11-year history. After all, all of its other teams already have two losses, and no team with two losses ever made the four-team field. Based on how this year’s committee has approached its rankings so far, there’s no reason to think that trend would change unless several of the current teams with one loss — like Penn State, Notre Dame and Miami — tripped up down the stretch.
SEC commissioner Greg Sankey could not have envisioned that possibility.
He was one of the main architects of the 12-team format the Playoff first proposed in 2021. But during the year of stalled negotiations that followed between the commissioners, he frequently told reporters some variation of, “We’re fine staying at four.”
“Even after we announced the additions of Oklahoma and Texas, I’m still comfortable staying at four,” he said on a Fox Sports podcast in 2023. “I don’t think we’re going to have fewer teams in the four than we’ve had.”
@joelklattshow Greg Sankey had a savage moment when explaining why the CFP expanded despite him being fine with 4 teams 😂😂 #CFP #CFB #Expansion #SEC
♬ original sound – The Joel Klatt Show
Perhaps because of those additions and the altered schedules that followed, this season may have tested that theory.
It was a foregone conclusion most years that the SEC champion would reach the four-team field, in part because the league usually produced at least one season-long juggernaut. An undefeated team made it to the conference championship game in seven of the last eight seasons. But when 6-0 Texas lost to Georgia on Oct. 19, it was the earliest the SEC’s last undefeated team had fallen since 2007.
In an alternate, four-team version of this season, the Big Ten would be dominating the conversation. The main question: Would that league get two teams in or three?
The Big Ten currently has four of the top five teams in the CFP rankings: No. 1 Oregon, No. 2 Ohio State, No. 4 Penn State and No. 5 Indiana. Presumably, the loser of Saturday’s Indiana-Ohio State showdown will drop out of the top five, but the regular season could still end with three, and possibly all four, avoiding a second loss. And for 10 years, that was the No. 1 criteria for reaching the four-team CFP.
Not only did no 11-2 conference champion ever make the four-team Playoff, but also only two of them, 2016 Penn State and 2017 Ohio State, even finished No. 5. And those both were beaten out by a Big Ten or SEC team with one loss.
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No conference ever sent three teams to the four-team CFP, and the Big Ten itself saw five of its teams miss the field with only one loss. That includes 11-1 Ohio State just last year. In all of those seasons, however, there were four or more teams from the other power conferences that also finished with zero or one loss.
With no more Pac-12 this season, it’s possible that won’t happen, if someone besides Texas wins the SEC and if 11-2 Colorado/Arizona State/Iowa State wins the Big 12.
Consider the likely top four under these scenarios.
Scenario 1: Ohio State beats Indiana, Oregon beats Ohio State
1. Oregon 13-0
2. Miami 12-1
3. Penn State or Notre Dame 11-1
4. Penn State or Notre Dame 11-1
Scenario 2: Indiana beats Ohio State
1. Oregon-Indiana winner 13-0
2. Oregon-Indiana loser 12-1
3. Miami 12-1
4. Penn State or Notre Dame 11-1
Scenario 3: Ohio State beats Indiana and Oregon
1. Ohio State 12-1
2. Oregon 12-1
3. Miami 12-1
4. Penn State or Notre Dame 11-1
The Big Ten gets two bids in one of them and possibly three in the other two.
The closest a conference ever came to securing an 11-2 champion was the SEC in 2017. After starting the season 5-2, Auburn won its next five — including two wins in three weeks over teams ranked No. 1 in the country — and had jumped to No. 2 before the SEC championship game. The Tigers would have been in with a win against 11-1 Georgia, but they lost 28-7.
The SEC’s best hope of an 11-2 team making a four-team field this season might be if SMU became the ACC champion. The committee has shown little respect for the 9-1 Mustangs to this point, as they sit down at No. 13, ranked behind four SEC teams with two losses. It’s doubtful they’d leapfrog whichever of Alabama/Ole Miss/Georgia/Tennessee won the conference in this scenario.
But that 11-2 SEC team would still likely get squeezed out by 11-1 Penn State and 11-1 Notre Dame if both won out.
Contrary to Sankey’s public comments, the SEC was never going to stand by and let the four-team Playoff go on indefinitely. In fact, one of its own presidents, Mississippi State’s Mark Keenum, helped resuscitate the 12-team plan in 2022 after it was stalled for a full year by the ACC, Big Ten and Pac-12. The CFP board, chaired by Keenum, essentially told the commissioners at that point, go get this done already.
And it’s a good thing they did. The SEC may have seceded from the Playoff entirely if the event featured two schools from Indiana and none from the South.
(Photo: Gregory Shamus / Getty Images)
