It's not happening in the imminent future, but years down the line, the Auburn Tigers and the rest of the SEC could one day play a 10-game conference schedule as their regular season, and have preseason games against Group of Six teams. The G6 now includes the revived Pac-12, which features two teams from the original Pac-12, in addition to the Sun Belt, American Conference, Conference USA, Mountain West, and MAC conferences.
USA Today's Matt Hayes believes Greg Sankey wouldn't budge an inch on his insistence not to expand the CFP field to 24. As Hayes said, that'd be the first step in consolidating the sport into one monolith, taking away media rights from the SEC, which has the strongest media rights deal: ESPN.
"The SEC can — and you better believe will — take its ball and play a 10-game conference schedule with a couple of preseason games against any (Group of Six) school interested in earning a couple of million per game," Hayes prefaced before saying, "And don’t kid yourself, those (G6) teams will line up to play those nonconference games and earn that cash.
"The SEC will then have its own eight-team playoff to determine the conference champion. And if the other nine conferences are interested in their playoff champion playing the SEC champion for the national title, that’s a road the SEC will travel down. For the right price."
Cody Campbell is trying to consolidate College Football. Greg Sankey must fight it.
2024 was supposed to kick off a golden age for the SEC with the additions of the Oklahoma Sooners and Texas Longhorns. It must be prolonged for as long as possible.
One tradition in the entire sport needs to be upheld. We're truly near the end of the simulation if there won't even be conferences in College Football in this dystopian future.
Cody Campbell, the man who keeps buying the Texas Tech Red Raiders into national relevance with their first top-seven finish in the AP Poll, is trying to change the sport by making a title-less TTU a champion in this day and age. He also wants to be the man leading the charge in "Saving College Sports" with the Trump administration through lobbying.
Sankey needs to stop that push and keep the sport as it is. Because an all-SEC schedule with games against the Group of Six conferences and an eight-game playoff is not a good future. Even if there are few non-conference games anymore against teams that aren't G6 or FCS squads, Sankey owes it to the sport to keep non-conference matchups like the upcoming Auburn-Notre Dame Fighting Irish home-and-home series alive for future generations.
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