The Tide is Turning on the SEC

It’s rained a lot in my hometown of Kansas City this week.

I typically trust meteorologists, but I’m starting to wonder if all this extra moisture might actually be from the tears of SEC coaches and administrators who attended their spring meetings.

I could spend the rest of this column dissecting the absurdity of these SEC complaints. 

For instance, it takes a bold man to inherit Nick Saban’s dynasty at Alabama and then spend his days whining about unfair treatment after losing by 21 to Oklahoma (Houston, the 11th-place Big 12 team, lost by just four in Norman) and trailing wire-to-wire at Vandy.

Thankfully, the Big 12 left the tears at home.

Led by Commissioner Brett Yormark, the league presented a united front this week in support of the 5 + 11 playoff format.

Instead of the Big Ten and SEC’s preferred format, which guarantees four automatic playoff bids to their conferences, the 5 + 11 proposal awards auto-bids to each Power Four champion and the highest-ranked Group of Six champion. The remaining spots would go to at-large teams.

This marks the second time in the past week that the Big 12 set aside its immediate interests for the greater good of college football.

Just last week, the Big 12 gave up any realistic shot at a first-round playoff bye in 2025 because Yormark believed awarding byes to the top four overall seeds was better for the sport. I wrote more about that decision here.

Now, the league is willingly forfeiting a guaranteed second playoff bid every year, which the Big Ten’s 4-4-2-2-1 format would secure.

In the 5 + 11 model, it’s unlikely the Big 12 would consistently land a second team via at-large selection.

So, why take such a strong stance against the Power Hungry Two’s preferred option?

Yormark’s quote says it all. Nobody outside the SEC or Big Ten wants the playoff to become an invitational. Spots should be earned.

Earning a spot via a selection committee isn’t exactly easy for the Big 12, which makes it all the more comical to hear SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey, Ole Miss Head Coach Lane Kiffin, and others gripe about a selection committee that has consistently gone out of its way to prop up their conference for a decade—until last season.

Ask the folks in Tallahassee how the committee treats the SEC.

But the Big 12 decided that battling for at-large bids against a stacked deck is still better than signing on the dotted line to confirm they're worth exactly half as much as the Big Ten or SEC.

And momentum may be shifting toward making the 5 + 11 format a reality. Check out this insight from Yahoo’s Ross Dellenger:

Dellenger theorizes that the SEC wouldn’t aggressively push to change how the committee evaluates their teams unless they believed that evaluation system would matter beyond this season. If the SEC believed their four auto-bids were already secured, why fight so hard?

That’s a positive sign for college football as a whole.

Public opinion is also turning sharply against the SEC and Big Ten. National media heavily criticized both leagues this week. 

Sports Illustrated’s Pat Forde wrote two columns (here and here) slamming the Power Two.

The Athletic’s Stewart Mandel had a brilliant tweet illustrating the absurdity of the SEC and Big Ten’s demands:

Congress also continues to apply pressure on Sankey and Big Ten commissioner Tony Petiti:

It would have been nice to have this level of pushback when the SEC and Big Ten first started raiding the Big 12 and Pac-12 in 2021. 

The current atrocities they’re pushing for were entirely predictable from the moment they began dismantling other conferences, yet back then, there was mostly cheerleading or indifference from national media.

But at this point, we’ll take all the support we can get.

We’re still far from the finish line, but the last week seems to have made a real difference in the battle for the soul of the sport we love.

Stay tuned.

What You Need to Know

• Brett Yormark says the Big 12 is passing on private equity for now. He also gave an update on another controversial revenue stream the league is considering.

• Here’s a sneak peek at the propaganda packets the SEC is circulating to media members. You can see where the Big 12 stands in their cherry-picked numbers. 

• Ross Dellenger has the latest in the battle over 3rd-part NIL deals. The best outcome for the Big 12 is that “fair market value” will actually be enforced, but how likely is that to actually happen? There’s plenty of doubt to go around.

• Wilner Hotline’s Jon Wilner makes the case that the Big 12 and the ACC should team up to fight against the Big Ten and SEC. 

• Is K-State bound for another disappointing basketball season after making a splash in the portal? Not so fast, my friend, says CBS Sports’ Issac Trotter. 

• The Big 12 dropped TV info for 40 football games this season. You can check out the major highlights here. Get ready for Big Noon Kickoff in Ames!

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