Ryan Day makes case for Big Ten having 4 auto bids in new Playoff format
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Ryan Day held court with reporters at B1G Media Days on Tuesday in Las Vegas, and he didn’t take long to address the elephant in the middle of the room
That would be the College Football Playoff elephant, or the future format more specifically. After a decade with just 4 teams in the Playoff, it was Day’s Ohio State Buckeyes who prevailed in the first season of the expanded 12-team format in 2024.
Because Day’s program won out in the 12-team format, one might think that he would be more than happy for that 12-team format to stick around for a while.
Well, they would be dead wrong, because Day is looking out for the future of the Playoff and the Big Ten. He wants to grow the sport, and he knows that the Big Ten now has a whopping 18 teams. With that in mind, Day told On3 that the Big Ten should be properly represented in the College Football Playoff.
The SEC has a vested interest, too, of course, and the 2 mega football conferences have been battling back and forth with Playoff proposals this offseason, just like they do battle on the field during the season.
Day just wants what he thinks makes sense for a conference the size and quality of the Big Ten. Naturally, the leaders of the SEC just want the same.
“We should have 4 automatic qualifiers from the jump because we have 18 teams, (and) we added those 4 teams from the Pac-12 and we play 9 (conference) games,” said Day.
Day was just trying to properly represent the Big Ten Conference, or properly defend it in the middle of July.
The results of all the back-and-forth proposals will come soon enough, and meanwhile all Day can take care of is getting Ohio State back to the Playoff to defend its title.
Cory Nightingale, a former sportswriter and sports editor at the Miami Herald and Palm Beach Post, is a South Florida-based freelance writer who covers Alabama for SaturdayDownSouth.com.
