The SEC-only playoff plan is a bluff. Probably.

DESTIN, Fla. — The SEC has won the College Football Playoff five times in eight seasons. The league has seen Alabama and Georgia play for the championship twice. Take a peek at preseason Vegas odds and there’s a decent chance the conference adds another trophy to its case this fall, too. 

But while the current four-team CFP format is working just dandy for the SEC, commissioner Greg Sankey’s offseason “blue-sky” brainstorming sessions led the conference to ponder the future of how to crown a champion after the 12-team playoff expansion proposal died back in February. Just before this week’s SEC spring meetings, the broad strokes of a SEC-only playoff plan was released. 

The basics? Likely a six or eight-team tournament following the league’s regular season. Otherwise, know as a playoff. 

Sankey’s reasoning for the SEC-only idea — one that would undoubtedly generate Disney’s favorite conference Scrooge McDuck money — is because there’s “there’s nothing, literally nothing, after the 2025 season.”

“From my view, we have to consider what happens after the 12-year cycle concludes,” Sankey said Tuesday. 

But in the same breath, Sankey also acknowledged that the idea “kind of stopped” and the frameworks on of a “plan” are “still in a folder somewhere.” 

So much adieu about nothing?

Not exactly. 

The clock is ticking here. That much is certain. Due to basic logistics, the sport’s conference commissioners from the SEC, Big Ten, ACC, Big-12, Pac-12, Group of 5 and Notre Dame must come to some sort of future playoff agreement within the next year or so if it truly wants to hold a College Football Playoff in 2026. 

With the current CFP contract set to expire, the vote no longer needs to be unanimous though, which is what makes the SEC-only playoff idea seem much more like a bluff than a future outcome. At worst, it’s an IN CASE OF EMERGENCY ONLY button for the SEC. An insurance policy. 

Ideally, it motivates the butthurt conference commissioners, particularly of the Big Ten and ACC, to come back to the negotiating table. 

Sankey obviously pushed back on this notion, but it’s not a poor strategy. 

“I’m not offering that as leverage. We were talking about our own reality,” he said. 

“We had an opportunity to make a decision at the national level and didn’t, so that’s where we are. It wasn’t created as a threat. It’s not intended as a threat. It’s an acknowledgment of reality that we need to prepare for our scheduling purposes. And we need to think about what’s out there on the horizon.”

The SEC’s “own reality” is much different than the rest of the sport. Sankey knows this. He can press his thumb on the scale because only the SEC could plausibly pull off a conference-only playoff in 2026. 

But it’s evident the SEC would prefer to crown a champion that includes the entire sport. 

Sankey has made it abundantly clear that the SEC still supports multiple playoff models — the current four-team format or various 12 and 8-team concepts — so long as the proposals properly consider the league’s strength as a conference. 

Translation: Automatic qualifiers, bad. At-large bids, good. 

Sankey prefers a 12-team model with first-round byes for the top four seeds, six conference championship slots, including one for the Group of 5 (but notably no guaranteed seeds) and six at-large teams. With this setup, the SEC would routinely get at least three, and sometimes four or five teams, in the playoff each season once Oklahoma and Texas join the league.  

The commissioner did offer support for an eight-team playoff as well Tuesday — only with a hardline non-starter. 

“I’ve been open and public that eight teams without automatic qualifiers is something that we have an interest in exploring,” Sankey said. 

“But that didn’t seem to have the kind of support. The notion was we have to grant automatic bids. In an eight-team playoff with six automatic qualifiers, when you’re replacing the eighth-best team with the 20th-best team, I don’t think that playoff is sustainable.”

He’s right, but for some reason, the Big Ten, which certainly won’t need an automatic berth in the future, has been the biggest proponent of protecting such formats. 

So we sit at an impasse. As Sankey said, “Back to square one, it seems.”

Unless?!?!? The SEC-only idea gets others to start kicking the tires again. To come back to the bargaining table. That way that idea “in a folder somewhere” stays right where it is.