Big 12 & ACC Bow to the Big 10 and SEC in 2025 College Football Playoff Seeding

In this eye-opening episode, we dive into the seismic shift in college football's future: the Big 12 and ACC effectively waving the white flag to the Big Ten and SEC. With the new College Football Playoff format on the horizon in 2026, the two conferences already seem to have conceded by giving up their auto-bids. 

We unpack how the Big 12 and ACC's decision to concede automatic bids signals a changing of the guard in the sport’s power structure. What does this mean for competitive balance, media deals, and the long-term viability of the so-called "Power Five"? We break down the politics, the strategy, and the implications for fans, players, and the playoff landscape. Don't miss this essential breakdown of college football's evolving hierarchy.

Transcript

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The Big 12 has officially waved the white flag to the SEC in the Big 10. We're going to talk about that a much more on today's episode. From all along the state to Colorado, Arizona State is in St. Annette. We've got Big 12 covered from end zone to buzzer leader. This is Verse 12. We're all at this pass to all 16 teams. All in every episode. Hello and welcome to today's episode of Person 12. I'm your host Adam Gibby and this is my fourth time recording this podcast. I'm really struggling with the news they came out yesterday about the College Football Playoff. And I want to get into that. I want to do my best to stay on topic. The reason this is my fourth time recording is because I just keep finding myself for amyline and kind of ranting. And that's not what you want to hear. You know, you want to hear informative takes. You want to hear what's next, what's going to happen, what the ramifications of this decision are. And I'm going to do my best to do that on today's show. However, at the same time, I'm okay if you see a little bit of my emotion because I am upset. This is super frustrating. A little bit of a backstory. And I'm going to try to keep this brief. I'm a huge BYU fan. I grew up going to games with my dad, grew up watching games, haven't missed hardly any games in the last 20 years. And for years, I lived with a struggle of the Mountain West. And then for years, I lived with a struggle of independence. You know, not knowing who be always going to play the following season, not knowing whether or not if they go 10 and 2, they're going to have to play in the independence bull against University of Alabama Birmingham. Not knowing if they can even make it to a playoff by going undefeated. Not knowing anything really year to year because of the format and the way that the rules change within College Football. And so finally, two years ago, BYU gets invited to the Big 12. And this is a huge day for all BYU fans. This has been something that BYU fans have been waiting for for decades. And yesterday, it felt like we were kind of going backwards. It felt like we were waving the white flag and going back to the dark cave of the Mountain West or Independence. Am I exaggerating a little bit? Yeah, maybe. Maybe, you know, maybe we get to the other side of this and it's not actually a big deal. But let me explain what happened first off. If you haven't heard of the news already, the College Football Playoff announced that they will be switching from the format they played last year of having four automatic buys to the four highest ranked conference champions to just having a straight-up seed format. In other words, the Big 12 champion no longer gets a set first round by into the second round. And a favorable matchup instead, they now have to play whatever seed they're going to get. So for Arizona State last year, instead of being the four seed, they would have been the 11 seed. And I want to go into that here in a minute. The reason why this is so concerning is that there's no incentive whatsoever for the eight conferences outside of the SEC and Big 10 to agree to these terms. They didn't have to had to be unanimous for it to change this year. Going into next year when they go to 16 teams, that's when there doesn't need to be a unanimous vote. There just needs to be a super majority. But something happened. There is a reason why the Big 10 and SEC were able to get what they wanted. Because from a financial standpoint, this is a terrible idea for the Big 12. It's a terrible idea for the ACC and conference USA in the Mac and the PAC-12 in the Mountain West and every other conference. Because here's why. If you get into the College Football Playoff, you get $4 million for your conference. If you make it to the second round, you get an additional $4 million. And so Arizona State and Boise State both got $8 million for their conference without even having to play a single down. Additionally, they also get $3 million for travel. Now if you're USC and you're playing in the Rose Bowl, you're not going to use that entire $3 million that goes straight to the conference. If you're Ohio State having to travel, then yeah, you may end up using most of that money. Regardless, that's a lot of money that's being paid out to these teams in these conference by giving up that automatic bid. The conference is now our essentially surrendering $4 million for their conference, all because the SEC and the Big 10 wanted it. There's no reason for the other conference to accept this unless, and I mentioned this in a prior episode. So if you want to hear that, go back and listen to that one, unless the ACC and Big 12 felt like they were threatened. We all know that the SEC and Big 10 tomorrow could say, we're going to play our own championship game. We have Fox, we have the SP and we have ABC. You guys go play on the CW, go play on ESPN 2, go play on ESPN Plus. You want to deal with Amazon? Whatever, go do that. But we got the big markets and we're going to do what we want to do. They have the power to do that. They haven't done it to this point, and I thought that it wasn't going to happen at least until next year when the playoff was restructured. And we're going to go to the four automatic bids for the SEC and the SEC and Big 10 and then two for the ACC and Big 12 each. But it doesn't look like that's actually the case anymore. There seems to be more momentum now to just straight seating. And I'm going to get into why that could be such such a big problem, especially with the SEC here in a second. But to kind of give you an idea of what the playoff would have looked like last year. Instead of boys, you stay getting the three seed in Arizona State, getting the four seed. What you would have had is you would have had Oregon one Georgia two. Texas three Penn State four. So just right there, you already have two teams in the Big 10, two teams in the SEC each getting eight million dollars for their conference by just making it to that game. You would have then had the five seed and Notre Dame take on the 12 seed Clemson in South Bend. You would have had Ohio State take on Arizona in Columbus. You would have had Tennessee take on SMU in Knoxville. And you would have had Boise State host Indiana. That is a recipe for disaster. Arizona State going to Ohio State to play not a very good chance of winning that game. Clemson having a travel to Notre Dame, not a very good chance of winning that game. SMU having to go to Tennessee, not a very good chance of winning that game. The only one who may have made it out on scale this Boise State hosting Indiana realistically. And in all likelihood you would have looked at these as the final eight teams Oregon playing against Boise State or Ohio's or sorry or Indiana. Georgia playing against Tennessee. Texas playing against Ohio State and Penn State playing against Notre Dame. That is what they want. They want it to turn into a big 10 SEC tournament in the second round so that they can come back the next year and be like, hey, look seven of the eight teams who made the college football play off quarter finals or from our two conferences. Why are we even messing around with the big 12? Why are we messing around with the eight? And it's just sad. It's it's really unfortunate. And so you have to wonder why would the conferences agree to this? And there's only two reasonable answers and really it's one. The big 10 in the SEC probably went up to the other executives and said, hey, do it this way or else we're going to change things in a way that's going to hurt you more next year. Maybe we'll go to five out of bits and give everybody else only one. Maybe we'll just have our own championship. And so the big 12 ACC in other conferences say, okay, well, we can't survive with that. So we'll agree to your terms and just hope that you don't decide next year to also mess everybody over because that's sort of what it feels like is going to happen. It feels like next year the SEC and big 10 are just going to do something again and say, you know what, I know we've talked about four or two to we're going to go five five one one. Agreed to it or else we do our own championship. And then the big 12 and ACC will have to say, well, we need at least a shot at this. So we'll agree to it. I think you get one team from each conference, well, the big 10 and SEC have five team. I don't know what's going to happen again. I'm trying not to rant here. But that that sort of feels like the direction we're going and we're going a lot faster than what we what I expected. I mean, I was celebrating 100 days until college football. Now it feels like we might be 100 days away from the big 12 and ACC. Not having a future. The next thing I kind of want to talk about is why this is so important because some people are just going to say, well, just win games. You'll be ranked. Well, yes to a point. But ESPN also released their SP plus rankings yesterday. And I'm going to read this is going to be a little bit lengthy, but I want to read what the SP rankings are and then give you my take on it. This is what it says. The SP plus ratings are a measure of college football efficiency adjusted for tempo and opponent strength. They are predictive measure of sustainable and predictable aspects of a team's performance rather than a simple ranks of win or resume. SP plus rankings are updated throughout the season and include post spring updates. In other words, it's whatever they want it to be. I mean, if you want to say, hey, your opponents are really good. So that's going to boost your own ranking. Then you can do that. And I'm going to share what the rankings are here in a second. You're going to see what I mean. Here we go. I'm going to read the top 25 Ohio State. Oh, and if you're home, keep track on how many big 10 and SEC teams I mentioned here. 1 to 25 Ohio State Alabama Penn State Georgia, Texas Notre Dame, Oregon, Clemson, LSU, Michigan, Ole Miss Miami, Tennessee, Florida, Texas, A&M, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Kansas State, Illinois, SMU, Missouri, Arizona State, Indiana, Louisville, and Auburn. I didn't keep track there, but I think I just read most of the SEC. I don't remember saying Vanderbilt. I don't remember saying Kentucky. I don't remember saying Arkansas. I may have said every other team. And so these SP plus rankings already from the get go. These are post spring rankings. Games haven't happened yet. Roasters aren't even technically finalized. And yet they're already looking at it and saying, yeah, this is these are the top teams. You know whose name I don't see on there? BYU. BYU is not in the top 25. They just finished ranked number 13 in the country last season. I don't see Texas Tech who just had the second best transfer port of class in the entire nation. I don't see Colorado who finished ranked last year. I mean, I don't know what's going on here. This is absolutely insane that ESPN can just get away with these rankings and then have a huge effect on everything else. Now, I know what you're going to say. Well, the AP voters. That's what actually counts. Yes, you're right. But what are the AP voters looking at? The AP voters are looking at the exact same thing that I just read to you. They're looking at the SP plus rankings. And then when they pull out their polls, they're going to say, well, last year BYU finished 13. They should put them in the top 10. They have a returning quarterback, maybe more on that later, different episode. But then they'll look at the SP plus rankings ago. I don't even see BYU here. So can I really put them 10th? What about Texas Tech? They just had a great transfer portal class. They look like they're going to be great. I don't see them anywhere. I guess I'm not going to ring them Colorado. I don't see them anywhere. I can't ring them. And so you're going to get these AP votes coming in here pretty in the next couple of weeks. And you're going to see big 12 in ACCC teams ranked significantly lower than they should be ranked. You're going to see G5 teams not even appear. There may not be a single G5 team in the top 25 when we start off the season. Boise State got an automatic bid last year and they're probably not going to be ranked in the pre. Why is that so important? Well, here's why when the SEC teams play each other, they're playing ranked on ranked matchups. It's not going to really hurt them or hurt their rankings when they win or lose a game. The big 12, however, because they don't have teams in the top 25 suddenly have bad losses. The same thing with the ACC sure that there's a couple of ACCC teams on here. I clumps was number eight. 12 was Miami and 20 was SMU. But if any other ACCC teams beats one of those top three teams, that suddenly a terrible loss. There's not a lot of terrible losses in the big in the SEC. Alabama can lose South Carolina via well, you lost to a top 20 ESPN SB plus team and probably a ranked team because of that. And so as this goes on as the season continues, the big 12 in ACC are fighting uphill battle. The G5 teams are climbing Mount Everest just to try to get up to the top because there is no leash. There is no way for these teams to be able to slip up and be OK for the SEC in big 10. They can mess up a few times. They probably can mess up twice and still be ranked in the top 12. The pathway for a big 12 team to get into the top four this year to get an automatic buy is undefeated and probably having an impressive non-confernt resume. The pathway for Ohio State Alabama Georgia, Oregon, LSU to get into the playoff is going 11 and one playing four cupcakes because they don't play nine conference games. Only play eight play four comp cupcake games and finish 11 and one in there in the top four. OK, I'm not going to rant. I'm just going to stop there and go on to the next topic. One has to wonder if this is the end of the era for the big 12. I don't feel like that's crazy take right now given what's going on given where the money is going given the TV deals and expansion and this new development. One has to wonder what's what's the next thing for the big 12. You know, do they do teams need to start setting up for the next round of expansion. The teams need to hope that the SEC in big 10 look at their own conferences and say, you know what, we don't need Northwestern. We don't need Vanderbilt. We don't need Kentucky football because I think football is going to break off from the rest of college sports personally. We don't need Maryland Rutgers. All these others teams that aren't helping us out. And does that allow a spot for some big 12 teams to maybe get in? You know, I don't really like the chances of some teams in the big 12. Unfortunately, I'm not sure where that lands Baylor. I'm not sure where that lands Oklahoma state Arizona state Cincinnati, even Houston. But it kind of feels like that might be the future. I'm not calling for any team to be leaving right now. But it may be in their best interest to at least keep things open. Because it does not feel like the SEC in big 10 are going to be letting the big 12 and ACC continue to play with them very much longer. There was no reason for them to do this this year. We're less than 100 days away from college football starting. And they're so upset because boys, you stay got in over Ohio state or got in over Texas or got in over Tennessee. As a higher C that like, no, this isn't fair. We can't do this. We're going to change the rules. If you don't change the rules, we're going to throw a fit. If we throw a fit, we're going to win. We're going to see what happens. I'm going to be here covered in the big 12. I'm going to be covering as long as it's going. It's not going anywhere tomorrow. Then again, who knows. I said that just two days ago that the next changes may come in 2026. They they happen yesterday. So what do I know? So here we are. The big 12, the ACC wave the wife flag. And we'll see what happens next. And you know, this is kind of weird. I predicted that this would happen. I even was for it in a way. I said, you know, this may be the best interest of the conferences to basically take a step back and say, you know what, you're better than us. Do what you're going to do. We just need to survive. But it's kind of like if you've ever had like a pet pass away, you know, I'm not going to say like a family member, a family member because you know, that's obviously a lot more drastic. Like a pet pass way or maybe you had a job that you were leaving and you knew you're going to be sad about it. But you knew, you know, maybe it was for the best. Maybe the your pet had been suffering for a while or maybe you had been struggling at this job or whatever. But not until it actually happens to realize how much it really affects you. That's sort of what I'm feeling right now for the big 12. I'm sure a lot of you are as well. I figured there would be tough. It would be tough to see Brett, your mark, Jim Phillips stand up to the big 12, sorry, stand up to the big 10 in the SEC and say, you know what, you're right. You're the bigger brand. You have more bids. We're going to do what you want to do because if we don't do it, you want to do. You're going to throw a fit and make things worse for us. So you do what you want to do. But I didn't think it would feel like this again going back to what I was saying about being BYU fan. I grew up watching and loving BYU. And it was hard to watch them go through independence and not know what was going to happen. Not know if next year was the last year or to watch them go 10 and 2 in the regular season and have to play in the celebration. What was it? The whatever bowl game they played in in tree fort a couple years ago. I think it was the independence bowl. That was tough. And as much as I loved BYU, it was hard to know that it was playoff or bust for the cougars or as New Year's six bowl or bust for the cougars. That was hard. And the celebration and the joy, I was actually at the countdown when BYU joined the big 12. They had a massive party on the campus of BYU. I haven't even visited any family at the time. They had probably four or five thousand fans just screaming five four three two one canons go off confetti dance party athletes are there. Cosmos that are dancing. They've got all the big names eighties there. It's a huge celebration. We finally made it out after decades of Lavel Edwards working to get this team to relevance and then getting them there. And then getting them to the mountain west just for TCU and Utah to lead which diluted the conference to then going independent having to play Georgia Southern in the middle of November because nobody else wanted to play. I'm grateful for Georgia Southern. I'm grateful for East Carolina. I'm grateful for Portland State and Wagner driving a bus from upstate New York all the way down to provo in the middle of October because nobody else would play BYU. But it felt like those days were over. It felt like BYU had finally climbed the mountain reached the top and was in a sense on top of the world. Yes, we knew that we weren't the big 10. We knew we aren't the SEC, but we were power four. We're even power five for a year before everything happened in the pack 12. And now it feels like it's crumbling down. It feels like everything's going back to where it was just a lot of uncertainty. That's tough for a fan. And if you're a legacy big 12 fan, you know, one of the fans of Oklahoma State, Texas Tech, Baylor, Kansas, Kansas State, Iowa State. I'm sorry you're having to go through this. You've never felt this before. Well, you actually probably have felt this. It feels kind of similar to probably how you felt when Texas and Oklahoma left for the SEC. A lot of uncertainty. What's next? Will our team be included? Are we even going to have some sports or we're going to have to cut sports because of funding? Well, we have to subscribe to some weird channel just to watch our games or maybe they'll only be on ESPN plus. That's sort of what I'm feeling today. Again, I might be overexaggerating, but I purposely waited a day to record this podcast because I wanted the emotion, the raw emotion, where off I wanted to be able to step back, look at the situation and really analyze what's going on here. What is the future like? And also, I'm going to make this really brief because I don't think this is the most important part of the discussion. But what does this do to conference championship games? And I'm talking the big 12. I'm talking the ECM talking every conference as EC big 10 as well. Are we going to get to a point, especially in the SEC and big 10 where teams actually don't want to play in the big 10 or SEC championship. They don't want to risk injury. They want to rest their quarter back. If a team in the SEC knows whether or not they win the championship or not, they're going to either get an auto buy or be ranked high enough to host a first round game. May they not play their quarter back or starting running back? May they rest a couple of linebackers who've been banged up a little bit throughout the season. This feels like something that could end up actually happening. And you see this happened in the NFL all the time. In fact, it's so rampant in the NFL. And I'm not saying it's right or wrong at that level, at least. But it's so rampant that if you play fantasy football, they don't normally have leagues that play into the final week of the season because they know that there's going to be so many starters that are going to be out and not playing for their teams. Or they may only play for a single quarter or whatever it is. So there's a reason that most fantasy leagues actually finish the week before the regular seasons over. And so in the big 10 or SEC, if you're ranked number three or four and you're the third or fourth best team. And if you win a game, you can go to your conference championship. You may just sit there and go, yeah, I think I'm going to actually rest my quarter back. If we lose this game, it's not the end of the world will still host a playoff game. We'll still be in a great position. We've on to the quarter finals or the semi finals or whatever. We're going to be in a good spot. And in a world where conference championships already don't seem to matter as much as they used to this new development in the playoff format really dilutes how important a playoff spot is. Also, if you are the big 12 or ACC, now you're playing to potentially get the 11 or 12 seed. Congratulations. You're going to go if you win, you get to go on the road to Columbus, Ohio, where you get to go on the road to playing Notre Dame. Because that's probably where the ACC or big 12 championship is going to be ranked unless they're able to be 11 and one undefeated and win their conference championship. I don't know exactly what's going to happen with that, but it was just kind of a little side thing that I thought about with this new format and how it's going to affect conference championships even more. Not as word as it was yesterday, but I am still very worried. I'm worried at the speed that this is going. I'm worried that things are happening as quickly as they are. I don't know why I didn't expect anything different. I mean, the way the transfer portal NIL, conference realignment, expanding the playoff with us with us quickly is all that has happened. I don't know why it surprised me that there was a huge change to the college football playoff because I knew the SEC and Big 10 weren't happy about it. That was obvious. Oregon was so upset last year that they had to play Ohio State in the Rose Bowl. When Ohio State was clearly a better team than what their final ranking ended up being or where their seed ended up being, I should say. So we'll go for it. There will be brighter days. College football is still starting now in 99 days. And we're going to have fun. We're going to enjoy the ride while it lasts and who knows maybe it will last for decades longer. Who knows maybe the government will actually decide to do something about NIL and transfer portal and try to get involved and realize, hey, maybe we need to fix some things and that'll neutralize all these changes a little bit. I'm glad you're here. I'm glad you're listening. Hopefully you've enjoyed the show. If you have, please like and subscribe. It allows this program to continue to reach more people when Spotify, when Apple podcasts, whatever platform you're listening on, see that this show is getting downloads. It tells the algorithm, hey, maybe we should suggest this to other people. So if you could like and subscribe, it would mean a ton to me. I'll be here for as long as the big 12s here. I love this conference. I love what this conference is made of. I love the team from this conference. I love the competitiveness of this conference. I hope it continues on for years and years. Thank you so much for tuning in today and I'll see you next time.[Music]