Just when you thought the College Football Playoff conversation couldn’t get any worse, the Big Ten found a way to make it happen. 

Reports this weekend confirmed the league has moved off the 4/4/2/2 autobid plan (good) and is now floating a 24- or 28-team format with seven autobids each for the SEC and Big Ten, five for the Big 12 and ACC (bad).

Some key details:

• The Group of Six would get two bids, and there would be two at-large bids.

• Five total rounds, with byes for the top four seeds.

• The first two rounds on campus. 20 games in all.

• Conference championship games likely gone.

• The first round starts the second weekend of December, conveniently with no NFL competition.

That last bullet is the whole point. TV networks love it, and TV is what’s driving Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti to keep peddling these awful ideas.

Petiti hopes this will appease the SEC, whose coaches wanted to use a 5+11 system to grab six or seven spots every year. This proposal guarantees them seven and takes power away from the selection committee, which the SEC has pushed hard for.

Defenders claim this format keeps the regular season meaningful because teams would be jockeying for seeding and byes. But that’s a sliver of the urgency the sport’s regular season once had. 

A little more than a decade ago, a single loss could end your season. Now? We’re talking about four-loss Texas A&M still getting in.

Dragging the playoff to 28 teams doesn’t preserve the sport; it dilutes it. And for what? To let Petitti, who spent his career in pro sports and TV, hand his broadcast partners a shortsighted cash grab?

The reporting stresses this is still in early discussion. The SEC just got a first look. Maybe it doesn’t stick, but you know Petitti isn’t going down quietly.

The Big 12 certainly shouldn’t support it. The core problem is unchanged from the 4/4/2/2 idea: you don’t sign a document that declares you inferior to the Big Ten and SEC.

Yes, this version is more tempting with 71% as many autobids as the SEC/Big Ten instead of 50%. But you still can’t bite the apple, Eve. 

Signing on the dotted line sets a hard ceiling and tells the world you’ve accepted second-class status.

Brett Yormark has already doubled and tripled down on rejecting that. I’d be shocked if he flipped now. 

It’s frustrating that on the eve of the season, playoff talk still dominates everything. The heart and soul of college football has always been the best regular season in sports. 

Now, a group of cash-obsessed bad actors is exploiting the college sports power vacuum and trying to turn college football into diet NFL football. 

At this point, it’s triage. Save what we can of the best sport on earth before it’s unrecognizable.

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What You Need to Know

• Fox Sports analyst Joel Klatt picked his Big 12 champion on the latest edition of The Joel Klatt Show. He has the Big 12 champ hosting Alabama in an 8-9 playoff game. 

• True freshman Bear Bachmeier is reportedly the leader in the starting quarterback battle at BYU. According to offensive coordinator Aaron Roderick, it’s down to a competition between Bachemeir and Utah State transfer McCae Hillstead. 

• Speaking of quarterback battles, here’s West Virginia’s Rich Rodriguez with the latest update on where things stand with Max Brown, Nicco Marchiol, and Jaylen Henderson. 

• TNT has announced its broadcast crews for Big 12 football games this year. You’ll recognize plenty of these names, including some very notable former NFL stars. 

• K-State quarterback Avery Johnson’s father, Mark, admitted to 247 Sports that there were times he thought Avery should listen to transfer pitches from other schools, but Avery always shut that down. 

• Who has the toughest schedule in the Big 12? It’s the team playing the biggest non-conference game for the league this year, according to one ESPN analyst.

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