24-team College Football Playoff talks get real as Greg Sankey brings SEC stance to table

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In a move that signaled progress toward an agreement on College Football Playoff expansion, SEC commissioner Greg Sankey laid out several issues his conference needs addressed before it could agree to a 24-team CFP, including a concept to standardize scheduling across the power conferences that has the Big Ten’s support.

The College Football Playoff management committee, made up of 10 Football Bowl Subdivision conference commissioners and Notre Dame athletic director Pete Bevacqua, held a conference call earlier this week to continue expansion talks, and more calls are expected as soon as next week.

According to multiple people with direct knowledge of the conversations, there has been enough movement in the talks and enough work done on how to transition from a 12-team Playoff to a 24-team event to increase the chances that the super-sized CFP could be implemented next season.

The people spoke on condition of anonymity to The Athletic because internal CFP discussions have not been made public.

The CFP faces a Dec. 1 deadline to inform ESPN of any format changes for the 2027 season. An expansion to 24 teams would require a renegotiation of the current deal with ESPN, which currently pays $1.3 billion annually for the rights to the 12-team Playoff. The network’s six-year contract, which starts this year, also includes the rights to any expansion of the field up to 14 teams.

The CFP is contractually obligated to negotiate first with ESPN on the broadcast rights to an expanded postseason before taking it to the open market, and there is a growing feeling among people around the CFP talks that officials could open that 30-day negotiating window soon. Talks with ESPN would allow the conferences to put real numbers on the value of expansion while still not committing to expand.

A 24-team CFP format proposed by the Big Ten last year has now become the preferred model for all but the SEC, which has backed expansion to 16 teams. The Big 12, ACC and Notre Dame have publicly thrown support behind the 24-team plan. Sankey has acted more cautiously even as some of his members have expressed their desire for CFP expansion well beyond 16 teams.

The Big Ten and SEC hold the final say over the CFP model, and the two conferences have been at odds for over a year on what it should be.

According to five people briefed on the discussions, Sankey sent a memo to the other members of the management committee ahead of the latest call, spelling out the SEC’s priorities, many of which he has addressed publicly over the past few months.

Among them were assurances that if the SEC dropped its lucrative conference title game — as would be required with a 24-team Playoff — the league’s lost revenue would be covered by new Playoff money.

Yahoo! Sports first reported Sankey sent a memo to the rest of the management committee.

The four power-conference championship games have an estimated value of about $225 million. The windfall from CFP expansion would have to at least cover that.

The SEC’s championship game is the most lucrative among the Power 4 conferences, estimated to bring in about $100 million per year.

Sankey and his members have hammered away on the need for the CFP selection committee to put more emphasis on schedule strength since the expansion to 12 teams was implemented in 2024. Those comments have only intensified this year as the SEC enters its first season playing a nine-game conference schedule. The SEC also requires its members to play at least one nonconference game against another Power 4 conference opponent. The ACC and Big 12 do the same, but the Big Ten does not.

The SEC’s scheduling idea would require Playoff teams to play 10 qualifying games that could include conference opponents, other power-conference opponents and Notre Dame. The Big Ten would be amenable to this requirement.

“We are comfortable requiring members to play 10 games vs. P4 opponents to get an agreement with the SEC for a 24-team CFP,” Big Ten spokesman David Bassity told The Athletic.

How those standards would impact the Group of 6 conferences (the American, Conference USA, MAC, Mountain West, Pac-12 and Sun Belt) still needs to be worked out. It’s possible the Group of 6 could be exempt and subject to a different scheduling standard. The current agreement between the 10 conferences requires at least one spot in the Playoff be reserved for the highest ranked G6 team.

If the SEC gets on board with a 24-team Playoff, two of the people briefed on the discussions expect talks on a scheduling agreement between the SEC and Big Ten to be rekindled. Almost two years ago, the Big Ten and SEC began exploring the idea of creating a series of annual regular-season meetings between the two leagues. When the conferences split on Playoff expansion, that idea was shelved.

The Big Ten and Notre Dame are also expected to explore a scheduling arrangement that could guarantee a small number of yearly games for conference members against Notre Dame if the CFP expands to 24, according to the same two people.

Notre Dame currently has a long-term agreement in place that guarantees the Fighting Irish four or five games per season against ACC opponents. Notre Dame and USC of the Big Ten also recently announced they would renew their storied rivalry in 2030, after a four-year hiatus caused in part by the schools’ failure to agree on when their future games should fall during the season.

All this activity around CFP expansion comes as the season is about to kick off across the country with what most inside the industry concede is an underwhelming slate of Labor Day weekend games that features only one matchup of teams ranked in the preseason AP Top 25.

Coaches and administrators have said that beefing up nonconference schedules would be more palatable with a bigger Playoff field, and it is looking more likely that at least the latter could be in place by the start of the 2027 season.

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