DESTIN, Florida – There was an undercurrent under the salty waters crashing on the sugary beaches here at the annual Southeastern Conference Spring Meetings on Tuesday.
The football coaches and athletic directors from the 16 schools have been meeting and discussing increasing the new 12-team College Football Playoff (CFP) from 12 to 14 or 16 teams for the 2026 season. They were talking about play-in games for these expanded playoffs and a nine-game SEC schedule instead of eight – a discussion that is past its nine-year anniversary. The SEC just increased by two to 16 teams last season. And members are still playing only half of the league?
A lot of talk, but nothing will likely actually happen here.
In addition, SEC commissioner Greg Sankey would like to see the Strength of Schedule quotient calculated with more clarity by the College Football Playoff committee via more precise quantifying.
“We should be able to contextualize that better,” Sankey said. “What’s the balance?”
Sankey is a brilliant man, a quick study and thoroughly well read. He has always talked a good game when discussing the big picture of college football. But the pervasive feeling here emanating from him and the SEC and many of those who cover it is more primal.
The bottom line is Sankey and company are still pissed that more SEC teams did not make the CFP last season, and they’re trying to make damn sure that doesn’t happen again. Sankey has even expressed a desire for automatic bids for four SEC teams into the playoffs, which goes against the soul of competition itself.
“It’s clear that not losing becomes in many ways more important than winning,” Sankey said. “The University of Georgia lost to two teams (Alabama and Ole Miss) that were left out of the playoffs, and nobody had that kind of quality win. That’s the depth of thinking we need to go into.”
That was Sankey saying that Alabama and Ole Miss should have reached the playoffs last season, or one of them. And that SMU and Indiana with lighter schedules should not have. But his depth of thinking needs to drastically improve.
And try as he might, he should not be able to legislate more SEC teams into the playoffs via four automatic qualifiers from his league.
Alabama and Ole Miss each had very impressive wins over Georgia, which reached the College Football Playoff at 11-2 and 6-2.
But, Mr. Sankey, Alabama and Ole Miss did not take care of business after those wins. Great teams value the games against the elite opponents and the games against the not-so-elite teams. You have to win both. You have to win and not lose.
Alabama, on the other hand, lost the very next week to an average Vanderbilt team that finished 7-6 and 3-5. In the end, the Tide finished the regular season at 9-3 and 5-3 with an inexcusable, 24-3 loss to a below average Oklahoma team that finished 6-7 and 2-6. And that was Alabama’s last regular season game – a time of year when playoff teams start playing like playoff teams. And you want that team in the playoffs, Greg? No.
Ole Miss finished the regular season 9-3 and 5-3 as well with an inexcusable, 20-17 loss to Kentucky that finished 4-8 and 1-7. The Rebels also lost, 24-17, to an average Florida team late in the season that finished 8-5 and 4-4.
You are correct, Mr. Sankey, “not losing” can at times be more important than winning, particularly if you lose to teams like Vanderbilt and Oklahoma or Kentucky and Florida.
Not all SEC teams are good. People close to the SEC tend to forget that. The SEC has just as many bad and average teams in a season here and there – like last year – as the other top conferences. The SEC doesn’t get a pass into the playoffs because of previous seasons when it had more good teams.
While propping up Alabama and Ole Miss in his above comment, Sankey was taking a shot at SMU and Indiana for making the College Football Playoff at 11-2 and with lighter schedules at 11-2 and 11-1. Their schedules were lighter.
But what “deep thinker” Greg Sankey forgot about was the fact that one can’t use a difficult schedule as an argument for the playoffs unless a team beats enough of the hard and easier teams on that schedule, so it doesn’t get three losses. A team can’t just play a tough schedule. It has to actually win the games. It has to take care of business. The SEC did not do that last year – namely, Alabama and Ole Miss.
SMU and Indiana did.
In the future, SEC member football teams need to win on the field to reach the playoffs – not by virtue of what happens in some meetings at the beach in SEC country.
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