SEC, Big Ten meeting in Nashville to discuss 'overhauled postseason'
Changes can be coming to college football's postseason and the SEC and Big Ten can be leading that charge with a meeting scheduled in Nashville in October to discuss what teams not in the College Football Playoff field will be playing for.
Yahoo Sports' Ross Dellenger reports that the two conferences want to schedule more matchups together considering the ratings success of Texas-Michigan (9.19 million viewers) and USC-LSU (8.2 million).
"Discussions are expected to go beyond the regular season with the possibility of what officials describe as an 'overhauled postseason' for those programs not advancing to the CFP," Dellenger prefaced before saying, "Administrators are exploring ways to arrange more matchups that pair teams from the two leagues as opposed to their current bowl agreement pairings. The bowl agreements expire after the 2025 season.
"All of it is an effort to generate untapped revenue at a time when schools are bracing to spend more than $20 million annually in an athlete revenue-sharing concept tied to the House antitrust settlement."
SEC, Big Ten could break away from the rest of the sport at some point
This Nashville meeting could be the first domino to fall in the SEC and Big Ten's plan to escape the rest of college football.
CBS Sports' Dennis Dodd relayed that after a massive Week 2 that saw NIU upset Notre Dame and Cal upset Auburn, among other unpredictable outcomes, the sport still has its old-timey charm despite the likely upcoming split of the SEC and B1G.
"In these tenuous times when it seems like the Big Ten and SEC are going to separate from the rest of FBS like kings dismissing jesters from the royal court, we needed Saturday," Dodd prefaced before saying, "We needed it to remind us why we love college football in the first place. Its unpredictability. The absurd, unlikely upsets. It was refreshing to watch a school with the 143rd largest athletic department (Northern Illinois) beat a school with more money than God. OK, maybe not. But considering its Catholic underpinnings, Notre Dame has the ability to know for sure.
"But if the winds continue to blow as they have, these wonderful upsets will become more rare than table manners in a frat house. If the FBS subdivides where only the power schools play, there is less need for them to play the rest of the Group of Five and the FCS."
College football has seen massive changes every year, but the SEC and Big Ten leaving would create an almost entirely different sport from the remaining Power Conference teams, the Group of 5, and the FCS.
If the conferences want to become an NFL feeder system, choosing the best 32 teams among them and pairing them one-to-one with a franchise could make a lot of sense.