Everybody wants to fix the College Football Playoff, but nobody seems to know how. There’s a good reason for this. It’s because the College Football Playoff isn’t broken … college football is.
On Saturday, college football die-hards and casuals alike tuned in to watch two games that were largely decided before a snap ever took place. Sure, the possibility of an upset always looms, but the first quarters of Ole Miss’s 41-10 win over Tulane or Oregon’s 51-34 win over James Madison made it clear quickly how those games would go. They were results that would do nothing to slow the ceaseless wave of the college football literati who had spent the last few weeks gnashing their teeth in despair over the possibility these blowouts would happen and what it would all mean.
But the pearl-clutching, hemming and hawing are all directed at the wrong target. What we’re seeing in the College Football Playoff is the result of a far bigger problem in the sport. College football has always been a top-heavy sport, and while we’ve seen a more even distribution of that weight up top thanks to NIL and the transfer portal (the GLP-1 of college football), on the whole, the sport is more top-heavy than ever before.
Resources, talent shifting in one direction
There is far more talent available and far more money coming in than at any time before, and it’s all flowing overwhelmingly in one direction.
If you look at the top recruiting classes for the 2026 cycle, you’ll notice a couple of things. The first is that, for the first time since 2008, the top class in the country belongs outside of the SEC. USC took the honors this year, the first non-SEC program to do so since Miami way back when. Furthermore, Alabama is the only SEC school to finish in the top four, but while that’s nice to see as far as spreading the talent around, it ignores the larger picture.
Sure, the Big Ten has the top spot, but 23 of the top 35 classes call the Big Ten or SEC home. The only non-Big Ten and SEC schools to crack the top 20 were Notre Dame, Miami, Florida State, North Carolina, Texas Tech and Clemson. Of those six, only Notre Dame and Miami are in the top 10, and Miami is 10th.
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John Talty
Damage done by mass realignment
Recruiting rankings are not the only area in which the Big Ten and SEC have consolidated power. They’re just another result of that consolidation. In the last 15 years, the Big Ten has added Nebraska, Maryland, Rutgers, UCLA, USC, Oregon and Washington to the fold. Taking the last four essentially killed the Pac-12, while reaching out and taking Nebraska caused a destabilizing effect on the Big 12. An instability the SEC was all too happy to take advantage of as it poached Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas and Texas A&M from the league over the last 15 years, too. Both leagues will exist in 2026 but largely in name only. Clearly, the Big 12 has survived the attacks much stronger than the Pac-12 has, but the league has seen all of its biggest brands taken from it, which leaves it at a disadvantage when it comes to finding a television deal, causing the gap to grow only wider.
Perhaps that’s why, while we were all forced to suffer the horrors of two uncompetitive football games on Saturday, Arizona State’s Kenny Dillingham was sending out a call to any possible billionaires who wanted to buy him a new roster. Because that’s where we are now with NIL. The sport dragged its collective feet and ignored the giant tidal wave coming at it for decades, only to dive in full speed ahead on openly paying players (some of) what they’re owed. Only, you know, with hardly any regulations or guidelines that everybody can follow and no viable way to enforce them. Whose fault is that? I don’t know? Everybody’s?
Anyway, right now, people are looking at the Group of Five as the problem with the playoff, but believe me: if finances continue to work the way they’re working in this sport, it’s only a matter of time before the ACC and Big 12 get the same treatment people are giving Tulane and James Madison. After all, it’s the Big Ten and SEC who have been handed complete control of the future of the format as a compromise to simply let the ACC and Big 12 continue to exist.
Big Ten, SEC will win out in the end
But, the truth is, the Big Ten and SEC have always controlled the College Football Playoff. The Big Ten and SEC have won nine of the first 11 College Football Playoffs. Clemson is the only team from outside those leagues to win it, and it’s done so twice. Of course, Clemson has only made the field once since the NCAA stopped forcing transfers to sit out a year after changing schools and hasn’t won a playoff game at all. That’s mostly due to Clemson’s stubbornness, but it’s fitting nonetheless.
To drive the point home even further, of the 22 teams that have played in a College Football Playoff National Championship, 16 currently reside in the Big Ten or SEC. Clemson (4x), TCU and Notre Dame are the only teams to get there who aren’t in those leagues (Oregon and Washington made it while still members of the Pac-12, but are now in the Big Ten).
As the Big Ten and SEC expanded, the Big 12 and ACC did what they had to do to try to keep up. All of which has led to bloated conferences spanning the entire continent where you only play half the league in any given season, leading to ridiculous tie-breaker scenarios that end up with a five-loss Duke winning the ACC, which puts those damned Dukes of James Madison in the field!
So what’s the solution? How do we fix it all? I don’t know that you can, but I do believe there’s a natural outcome from all of this that at least leads to equilibrium of some sort.
You simply let nature take its course. Let the Big Ten and SEC finish what they started. Whether you’re excited about it or not — and believe me, I am not — the Super League or whatever dumb name you want to give it is coming. I don’t know if it will be the result of a hostile takeover by the Big Ten and SEC pilfering all the remaining valuable brands once the current television deals expire, or if it’ll be the result of a compromise between the four leagues to break off from the NCAA and form their own, fully professionalized league. But whatever the method, and whatever the final makeup of the schools involved, it is coming.
And when it does, your College Football Playoff will finally be “fixed.” The blowouts, however, will continue.
