Money And Power Are The True Motivation Behind A 14-Team College Football Playoff⎮Barrett Sallee

Discussions are continuing among college football decision-makers about the possibility of expanding the 12-team College Football Playoff into a 14-team event beginning after the 2026 regular season. The proposal, which appears to be close to the finish line, would include three automatic bids for the SEC and Big Ten, two for the ACC and Big 12, one for a Group of Five team and the remaining three spots would be reserved for the highest-ranked teams remaining in the final College Football Playoff rankings.

The proposal, which seemingly came out of nowhere last month, stunned the college football world and made one thing abundantly clear — the sport’s decision-makers don’t actually care about the sport itself. Access, revenue and governance are the three words that have been mentioned prominently during these discussions. What words have fallen onto the back burner? Excellence. Champion. Elite. Worth. They don’t care about who wins the national championship. They don’t care about "settling it on the field." All they care about is money. That money gives them power. That power is gained by granting access to teams that haven’t "earned it on the field."

Does that seem like an overreaction? If it does, go back and read virtually every article — sourced and unsourced — regarding this potential expansion. The idea of actually determining a national champion is rarely mentioned. It’s irrelevant. A non-factor. Determining an actual winner is just a means to an end for people that have been blinded by power and money.

It’s incredibly disappointing.

When SEC commissioner Greg Sankey and Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti announced an "alliance" last month to help guide college athletics through the new challenges of players earning money through name, image and likeness; moving from school-to-school via the transfer portal; and streamlining a college football calendar that has gone way out of whack, it signaled to me that finally — after all of these years — somebody is going to stand up and become the psuedo-czar(s) of college football. Instead, the alliance has fractured it into a thousand pieces as decision-makers have continued to only look out for themselves and their own conferences. Don’t get me wrong, that is their primary job responsibility. However, that’s not what was sold to the public.

The college football playoffs seem likely to expand, and it's all because of money. Mandatory Credit: Matthew Hinton-USA TODAY Sports

So, here we stand on the brink of instituting a system that won’t determine a true champion. Instead, we will be force-fed a postseason that will already have predetermined parameters on which teams and conferences actually matter based on revenue …and revenue alone. This is the slippery slope that those of us who push for a return to the BCS have been warning the public about all along. We haven’t even reached the 12-team format yet, and it is already obsolete as the sport we love rapidly turns into the NFL. That’s not what college football should be.

We never heard the words "meaningful" and "meaningless" in the BCS era. Why? Every aspect of college football was meaningful. Whether it was Utah’s run to the Sugar Bowl in the 2000s, Peyton Manning leading the Tennessee marching band in the 1990s, the era of great running backs with Auburn’s Bo Jackson and Georgia’s Herschel Walker in the 1980s or whatever made you fall in love with the sport — most of it had little-to-nothing to do with who won the national title — or the chase for the national title at all.

College football is unique. Yes, determining the national champion should be part of the story. It shouldn’t be the primary story. That’s not what made it great. It’s decision-makers have lost sight of what matters and fallen in love with the almighty dollar. 

Yes, there will be teams vying for bids and byes during the month of November. That’s nice. However, the postseason has never been the foundation of the game. The push for a 14-team playoff not only diminishes the regular season storylines, but the suits are making it abundantly clear that they don’t even care about the national champion either. They just care that they exist. If there are 22 players on the field, the suits have already won. When they look down on the field from their luxury suites, all they’ll see is green. It’s the only thing that they care about anymore. They’ve made that abundantly clear with their own actions during the push to a 14-team playoff.