According to multiple reports, the SEC and Big Ten will seek a king’s ransom in the next Playoff contract in 2026.

Four Playoff bids apiece is the asking price. In a potential 14- or 16-team field, at least half of the bids would go to those 2 conferences. It would be the first true acknowledgment of “The Big 2 vs. the field.” Well, I suppose that excludes the conference’s current media contracts, which already favored the Big Ten and SEC before their new, even more self-separating deals began in 2024.

But ironically, seeking a king’s ransom isn’t so much about an acknowledgment of money as it is an acknowledgment of prolonged dominance.

That’s why the numbers actually support such a request, though I don’t anticipate the ACC, Big 12, Pac-12 and Group of 5 will see it that way. I anticipate pushback without any real acknowledgment of what the past decade-plus has shown us.

For now, let’s not be too current by pointing out that 12 of the top 13 teams in the AP Poll are from those 2 conferences as is the majority of the Top 25 (64%). That stuff can change, and even if it doesn’t, that’s still too small of a sample size for such a seismic move for the future of the sport.

Instead, let’s look at the Playoff era as a whole. Ten national championships were won. Eight of them came from schools that were from the Big Ten (2) or SEC (6).

Not great for the “all conferences are equal argument,” is it? Neither is the fact that of the 20 national championship berths in the Playoff era, 15 spots were occupied by teams that are now in the Big Ten or the SEC.

Think that’s too elitist and it just shows that those conferences were top-heavy? Fine. Let’s look at New Year’s 6 bowl victories in the Playoff era. That eliminates the significance of the national championship winner. In the 10 years of the Playoff era, we’ve seen 6 of those played per year, meaning that there are 60 winners of those games. Here’s the breakdown by conference of those games won by teams that are currently in those conferences:

  • SEC — 25
  • Big Ten — 19
  • ACC — 7
  • Big 12 — 7
  • Group of 5 — 2 (that’s including Pac-12 bound Boise State’s 2014 Fiesta Bowl win)
  • Pac-12 — 0

To recap, 44 of the 60 New Year’s 6 bowl winners (73%) came from schools that are now in the Big Ten or SEC. The current ACC, Big 12, Pac-12 and Group of 5 have fewer combined New Year’s 6 bowl victories in the Playoff era (16) than the Big Ten (19), and they don’t even sniff the SEC (25).

I know what you’re thinking — why is it fair to award realigned schools to their new conferences instead of their old ones? It’s simple. These are future Playoff bids.

Sorry to ACC commissioner Jim Phillips, but adding Cal, SMU and Stanford is just a touch different than the SEC adding Oklahoma and Texas. While we applaud the Big 12 for pivoting without those powers by adding the Arizona schools, Utah and Colorado, that’s a different ballgame than the Big Ten adding the California schools, Oregon and Washington. The Big 12 now doesn’t have an active member who won a national championship in the past 3 decades, and the Big Ten just added 2 programs that played in a national title game in the Playoff era.

Failure to acknowledge this disparity is downright negligent. I didn’t even bring up the fact that in the 21st century, current members of the Big Ten and SEC won 20 of the 24 BCS/Playoff national titles (83%) because the resistance to 4 auto bids apiece will be based on the “they’re not as deep as everyone suggests” notion. Based on what? Let’s find a single data point to suggest that the ACC, Big 12 and sort of alive Pac-12 are on the Big Ten and SEC’s level.

Oh, wait! I’ve got one courtesy of the aforementioned Phillips!

When Phillips claimed at ACC Media Days that the ACC had “the most exciting collection of teams in college football,” he didn’t acknowledge that the conference was 0-5 with 5 double-digit losses in New Year’s 6 games in the 2020s. Nah. Instead, his data point was the coaches.

“We have elite coaching leadership, 6 ACC head coaches named to the 2024 Dodd Trophy preseason watch list. No conference has more,” Phillips said at ACC Media Days (H/T On3). “Two of the 3 active coaches in the country to win a national title reside here in the ACC: Mack Brown and Dabo Swinney. The combination of our proven veteran coaches combined with our dynamic young coaches is incredibly powerful.”

Sold.

After all, I base my excitement exclusively on the Dodd Trophy preseason watch list. The data point that Phillips left out was that while technically “no conference had more” representation on the Dodd Trophy preseason watch list, the SEC had just as many. Mind you, that was without Kalen DeBoer, AKA the coach of the current No. 1 team in the AP Poll, because coaches in Year 1 at a new school aren’t eligible.

To update Phillips’ data point about the ACC’s active national championship-winning coaches Brown and Swinney, we should mention that the former asked his team if he should retire after a beatdown home loss against James Madison while the latter insisted that everything was fine after a beatdown loss against Georgia.

I mention that not just to troll Phillips and his depressing flex, but to point out how flimsy the non-Big Ten/SEC conference arguments have become. I cannot imagine having to make that case to those decision-makers. You can’t even make the argument that favoring the Big Ten and SEC in the Playoff would be a slap in the face of national representation. The Big Ten is flying from Los Angeles to Piscataway, New Jersey, for conference play. The SEC now has schools like Oklahoma and Florida that are a 1,200-mile drive apart.

There’s a reason the Big Ten and SEC joined forces. They’re setting the standard on and off the field. A new standard will await when the field inevitably expands in 2026. We’ll likely see a majority of auto bids representing the field as opposed to the current minority (5 of 12). How much that is remains to be seen.

If 4 is indeed the number pushed by Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti and SEC commissioner Greg Sankey after they meet with their athletic directors in Nashville next week, you can bank on Phillips and others making statements that essentially laugh off that notion of superiority. They’re entitled to that. The Big Ten and SEC would have the upper hand financially and competitively in any sort of breakaway, which is why that leverage exists.

A king’s ransom might be a tall ask. At this point, though, asking for anything less would be a disservice to the most exciting collection of teams in college football.

And no, I don’t mean the ACC.