The Big Ten and the SEC were unable to come to an agreement about the format of next year’s College Football Playoff, and now that the deadline has been reached, the CFP will consist of 12 teams for the 2026 season, according to multiple reports.
It will be the third year of the 12-team format, the first of which Ohio State made a historic four-game run to win the national championship as the No. 8 seed.
The two conferences both wanted to expand the playoff, but had different ideas of how much. SEC commissioner Greg Sankey wanted the playoff to expand to 16 teams while it was reported that Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti was pushing for an expansion to a 24-team playoff after three years of a 16-team playoff, Pete Thamel of ESPN reported.
There are also differences in the way each conference wants automatic bids to the playoff distributed. Sankey and the SEC are in favor of five conference champions being guaranteed bids and the other 11 spots going to at-large selections.
The Big Ten has been pushing to give automatic bids to teams in every Power Four conference, with the Big Ten and SEC getting more auto bids than the ACC and Big 12.
The two conferences will continue to attempt to come to an agreement moving forward, but any agreement reached would not affect the upcoming college football season. At this point, the earliest expansion would come for the 2027 College Football Playoff.
