Big Ten vs. SEC: Playoff Power Struggle and the Big 12’s Golden Opportunity

The Big Ten and SEC are at it again—this time clashing over College Football Playoff structure and how many conference games each league should play. In this episode of First and 12, Adam Gibby breaks down the battle between the sport's two biggest powers and explains how their disagreement could create a window for the Big 12 to gain leverage, visibility, and more playoff access. Is this the Big 12’s moment to rise above the noise?

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The Big Tan and SEC are in a fight. And somehow the Big 12 might win. I want to tell you what it is and why the Big 12 isn't a good spot on today's show. From all over the state to Colorado, Arizona State to Cincinnati, we've got Big 12 covered from end zone to buzzer-beater. It's a person 12. Draw us a pass to all 16 teams, all in every episode. Hello everybody, welcome to today's episode of First and 12. Thank you so much for joining us today. Really do appreciate it. If you could do me a huge favor, like this show, give it a five-star rating, share it with your friends, just help grow the community. We're getting down to the last couple of weeks for college football starts, and it feels real now. It feels very real. Talking season is almost over when I mean by that is media days. Let's be honest, media days are not all that great. I know it gives us content and it gives us stuff to talk about, kind of gets us excited for the season. But why is the SEC doing four days of SEC media days? Four days. I live in SEC country, and so when I turn on the local radio stations, I get to hear what is being talked about. And even the SEC broadcasters, the radio shows I'm listening to, they're talking about burnout right now. They're talking about how they aren't exactly sure why they're there for another day. They don't understand why we can't condense this down. And it really doesn't make a ton of sense to me either. I do think that two days is a good amount. I really did like the big 12s, two day event. And I think that you can really fit everything in during that time. You don't need to have a four day event. But is what it is, whatever. I wanted to talk today about a few of that is going on between the big 10 and the SEC. And this is actually something that is very real right now. This isn't rumors. This is confirmed reports. And what it is is that the big 10 in the SEC are at a stalemate when it comes to the college football playoff and when it comes to different formats, when it comes to anything when we're in those regard. And essentially what is going on here is that the big 10 wants to go to a 4 4 2 2 1 model. If you don't know what that is, listen back to any of my other episodes. I've talked about it on a bunch of different episodes. Very, very quick version. Four automatic bits for the big 10, four automatic for the SEC, two for the SEC, two for the big 12, and then one automatic qualifier for the next best conference champion, which would likely go to the pack 12 with their new realignment. The SEC has said they're not in favor of this. They prefer a 5 plus 11 model, meaning conference champions from the five highest ranked conferences get to go to the playoff no matter what, regardless of ranking. And then you get 11 at large. The big 12 and ACC are also on board with this. So it's everybody seems to be on board with this 5 plus 11 except for the big 10. The problem is the big 10 is a major stakeholder in college football. They have enough power enough influence to where even if everybody else disagreed, they could still put their foot down and basically delay things or keep things from moving forward. The big 10 has essentially come back though and said, we will consider the 5 plus 11, but SEC, you got to go to nine conference games because everybody else is playing nine conference games. Why do you only get to play eight and and great, Sanky and other coaches throughout the four day again, four days crazy. SEC media days have said that they like eight games. They say, we think that our conference has the toughest games, which they do. And nobody would trade with us. Well, there's been a lot of feuding online. I yesterday I mentioned the Twitter post that I put up that showed the Missouri versus the TCU schedule. And just a quick live update on that as I look that up that post has now received six, three tweets, 54 likes 23 comments and 8,000 impressions. That is a somewhat viral post, especially for reply in the middle of July for college football. Now if it was middle of the season, that's your typical post right there. But in the off season, that's pretty big. And it's just SEC fans, big 12 fans going at each other saying Missouri schedule is harder. No, TCU is as harder. Basically, it's crazy to see how many different opinions are out there. But the point still being the same, the SEC is saying we don't need nine conference games. We don't need eight. The big 10, big 12 ACC every other conference in the entire nation is saying, why don't you play by the same rules as everybody else? Everybody else has nine. Why don't you have nine? So what it kind of feels like we might end up getting here is the SEC agreeing to go to nine conference games and the big 10 agreeing to go to the five plus 11. This feels like the direction we might be headed. Now, this is still pretty early on. There can obviously be other developments that come up with this story. But that does seem to be the most maybe the most likely scenario at this point. There are a couple reasons why this is good news for the big 12. The first is common fans don't like to see fighting, right? Like we like to see games played on the field. We like to see results. We like to see what's going to happen with the rankings, what the conference standings. We just want to watch the games. And once the season gets going, we don't want to hear this drama. We just want to watch the games. And so if the SEC and big 10 are just fighting each other, that's going to open up the opportunity for big 12 to get a little bit more credibility, get a little bit more of a punch, no pun intended, when it comes to the landscape of college football. Common fans are people who maybe don't have a team or maybe they do have a team, but they just enjoy college football as well. They may not want to watch big 10 because they're mad at the big 10. They may not want to watch SEC football because they're mad at the SEC or they might be mad at both conferences. And so I'm not going to watch those games. I'm just going to turn on a different game. Oh, look, Utah is playing Kansas State. Let's tune into that. That's the first thing. The second thing, I think this one is even more of a potential benefit for the big 12 is that if this happens, well, first off, the big 12 gets the kind of play off they want. But second, the SEC is now going to average half a loss more per team. What I mean by that is right now these are the teams that SEC's or SEC teams are playing instead of playing a ninth conference game. This is for 2025. Alabama is playing Eastern Illinois. Arkansas is playing Memphis. That's a good game. I respect that. Auburn is playing Mercer. Florida will play Florida State. Again, I respect that. That's a rivalry game. I would be okay with Florida and Georgia actually keeping at eight conference games and then sticking with the rival. You'll see here to say Georgia plays Georgia Tech at the end of the season. I'm okay with that. But even Georgia, their extra game was against Charlotte. Kentucky played Tennessee Tech or is going to play Tennessee Tech. LSU will take on Western Kentucky. Ole Miss plays the mighty Citadel, Mississippi State. They need all the help they can get, but they're playing Alcorn State. Missouri will face off against UMass. Oklahoma will play Kentucky State. South Carolina will play Coastal Carolina. I respect that one. Tennessee will play New Mexico State. Texas faces Sam Houston, Texas A&M, play Samford and Vanderbilt plays against Utah State. Those are who they are playing instead of playing each other. Of those teams I just mentioned, there are 16 SEC teams. I think they go 15-1 in those games. 15-1. Now they're facing each other. They go eight and eight. There's more competitive games. There's more opportunities for hiring teams to lose a game. Additionally, if Auburn's playing Mercer the week before playing Alabama, they can rest their starters probably starting in the third quarter. If they're playing Kentucky, they don't get that luxury. It makes things just a little bit more interesting. It makes things just a little bit harder to go in and week in and week out when you're conference games when you don't have a cupcake in the middle. That can help the big 12. Last year, remember, South Carolina, Alabama, they each had three losses. If they had to play another conference game, does one of those teams get a fourth loss? Maybe those two teams face off against each other. Well then, one has to win. One has to lose. Now you have an eight and four team and you have a nine and three team. Still, same record, nine and three. I don't know. It could get interesting for the big 12. Now, if there is a bad side to this, and there is a potential bad side to this, it's that the SEC would schedule even more soft than what they currently play. They would basically just schedule three complete cupcakes. Kind of like what Indiana is doing. If you want to hear about that, check out yesterday's podcast. Alabama right now plays a respectable, again, if we went to nine conference games, we took off Eastern Illinois and made it somebody else. They played Florida State, Louisiana, Monroe, and Wisconsin. That's respectable. Arkansas plays A&M, sorry, Alabama, A&M, Arkansas State, and Notre Dame. That's respectable. Auburn plays Baylor, Ball State, South Alabama. That's a little weak, but okay, that's not out of the realm of craziness, right? There's big 12 teams that play that kind of schedule. That's fine. Florida plays Long Island, Miami, and South Florida. That's fine. You go, again, I'm okay with that. That's not the worst thing in the world. I could keep going down the list. Basically the SEC is one good game. Game against a really, really bad G5 and then an FCS opponent. That's basically what every other conference is doing right now. That's perfectly fine. But if they went to nine conference games, would they replace their P4 game? Would Florida instead of playing Miami, would they just say, well, we're just going to play South Florida? Would Georgia, who is playing Charlotte, who is playing Georgia Tech, say, we're just going to play Marshall? Would Ole Miss, who's playing Tulane, a respectable team, would they say, we're not going to play Tulane, we're going to play Georgia Southern? I think that's the potential downside to this. Right now, the big 12 in SEC don't have any kind of scheduling alliance. And I realize teams do this individually, but just looking across the conference, there are not a lot of big 12 teams who are playing against SEC opponents. In fact, if I'm not mistaken, there's only two, maybe three. Was there any place Kansas? I know that Mississippi State plays Arizona State. I think Baylor plays, can't remember on the top of my head who they play, but I know Baylor is playing a SEC team as well. So you have three teams right now who are playing SEC opponents. Dealers those three by going to nine conference games, maybe. You might. But I do think overall, this is a good compromise. I think this is an opportunity for the big 12 to kind of rise from this feud between the SEC and the big 10 and to really come out on top. Now, not saying on top is in the best conference in the country or the most ranked teams, but just when we come out of it and say, okay, who won this battle, who lost this battle? Well, the big 10 didn't get the playoff model. They wanted well, the SEC had to go to nine conference games. Well, guess what? The big 12, they benefit from the SEC having to play that extra game. Again, every team is going to average half a loss more. And there are going to be marquee matchups. If you add a ninth game somewhere in that ninth game, there's going to be a Texas first 10 to see or an Alabama versus Georgia. That's going to come up somewhere and one of those teams is going to play themselves out of the college football playoff. It's going to happen. And if it doesn't happen one year, it's going to happen the next and you might get to those huge marquee games as a ninth game. It's, it's just going to help the big 12 out. And then the second thing is that again, you want to get these two conferences fighting all during the season. Fans just want to watch the games. If you're a big 10 fan and there's this huge bias against the SEC, instead of tuning in to watch, you know, the ABC game at 730, go turn on the other game, go go to ESPN and watch the big 12 matchup. That's an option. Same thing going for SEC fans looking at the big 10. Then again, I don't think SEC fans sometimes watch games outside of the SEC. Again, just based off of some of the comments that I'm getting on that social media post that I was referencing. It is, it's pretty crazy to see people really defend Missouri schedule against TCU schedule and say, Missouri is hands down the tougher schedule. It's, it's crazy. All right. Finally, last thing I wanted to mention on today's show, starting next week, we have real college football going on. Kansas State and Iowa State will begin their fall camps next week. Again, they get to start a week earlier because they play a week earlier than everybody else. And I wanted to talk a little bit about that game and there's going to be a full preview show on it, obviously, before we get there. But I did want to mention that this game between Kansas State and Iowa State needs to be massive. This needs to be something that gets college football excited. Last year, Florida State was able to do that. They brought in huge ratings. They just got a ton of excitement around the game before the season started, before at least really started. That's what we need to see. Again, it's the only game going on. It's 11 o'clock AM central on the SPN. There's not another game until that night when at 5.30 PM central, Fresno State will play on, will play another big 12 foe in Kansas. And so the first two games look like it's going to feature a combined three big 12 teams. We're going to get a lot of casual fans watching these games. What needs to happen is two things. In the Fresno State versus Kansas game, Kansas has to win this game. Last year, Kansas really struggled in certain games. They lost to, I believe, was UNLV. That was a tough loss for the J-Hawks. But more importantly, Iowa State and Kansas State, big 12 fans need to show up to this game. It would be an embarrassment to have this game. And I know it's across the world, literally, across the world. But it would be embarrassing for those stands to be even half empty. It's got to be a sellout. And I realize there's going to be a lot of fans in Ireland who are just going to show up because it's a football game. That's exciting for them. But big 12's fans got to show up. Big 12 fans have to tune into this game. If they look at this game, and I don't have the ratings up right now, but if they're able to look at and say, OK, last year, Florida State versus Georgia Tech brought in 12 million viewers. This year, Iowa State versus Kansas State brought in three million viewers. It's not a good look for the conference. It's not a healthy look for the conference. I don't think they're going to reach last year's numbers. There's just no team like Florida State. Florida State is going to bring eyes. There was high expectations. You have to remember Florida State was coming off of being, they were coming off of being rejected from the college football playoff despite going undefeated. And so there was a lot of people tuning in for that game because there was a lot of hype around Florida State. And I believe they finished ranked fifth in the entire country that the previous year. You don't get that with Iowa State and Kansas State. I do think that one or both of them may be ranked. So it could be a ranked unranked matchup, which will bring some intrigue. But there's got to be north of six, seven million viewers on this game. So if you're a big 12 fan, you'll listen to this podcast. You got to tune into this game. Number one is college football. Come on. We haven't had it for seven months. You got it. You got to watch it. It's college football, but second support the big 12. And you know, there's that whole thing of, oh, well, my one view isn't going to help. If we get tens of thousands of people and we spread the word, tens of thousand people, hundreds of thousand people, more people will tune in and it'll just make it more exciting. It'll make this season kick off with a really good stamp for the big 12. And that's what the big 12 needs right now. They need to be the best they can be. They need to get two teams in the college football playoff. They need to be highlighted on ESPN, highlighted on on a big new kickoff talks about on college game, a not disrespected, not having hosts say, why are we talking about this game when it was a ranked on ranked matchup? We need the big 12 to be respected and it starts on August 23rd at 11 o'clock AM central. Again, I use central because that's where most teams are in the big 12. They're in the central time zone. I can't wait. Like I said, I believe we're like 37 days away from that from that game kicking off. So it's, it's getting really close. It's getting really real. And of course, once we get closer, we'll have a, we'll have more of a breakdown and we'll look more specifically at the matchup. We got a lot of stuff coming up the next couple weeks. There's going to be a lot of stuff coming up, a lot of different topics as we ramp up for the college football season. So thank you so much for joining us along the ride. Thank you so much. And again, if you could just please like subscribe. Leave a five star review. I want this community to continue to grow. I want this to be something that can have influence. And for the first time, like I mentioned on, on that social media post, for the first time, I felt a little bit of a community there. Again, when you got 8,000 impressions, you have 24 comments. You have people going back and forth having dialogue, having that conversation. That is the mission I'm wanting to have. That's the goal I want this podcast. What I want this community to be, I want it to be a community that builds up supports the big 12 and really makes it just kind of a thorn in the side of the. As you see in big 10 to the point where even if it's just a little bit, it helps garner a little bit more respect and puts the big 12 on more of a pedestal, more of a, just more of a spot to where they are respect and talked about as a power conference. So if we can do that, that is the ultimate goal. So again, thank you so much. I'll catch you tomorrow. Bye.[MUSIC]