SEC Trojan Horse incoming. SEC Commissioner Sankey has come out strongly in favor of moving to a nine game conference schedule. What he didn't mention is his support for autobids into the CFP being restricted to teams from conferences with nine conference games. Conferences with less than nine games would still be eligible for at-large bids but would not get any autobids, not even for the conference champion.
This is clearly aimed at the ACC and Notre Dame. While the ACC has a scheduling agreement with Notre Dame, those are not conference games. The Big Ten likely is also behind this move, as it puts pressure on ND to fully join a conference by pressuring the ACC to move to nine conference games, which would make the current arrangement with ND difficult. Both the SEC and Big Ten have reasons to want the ACC to be weak. Not just to pick off the few valuable members but also to minimize how many slots ACC teams can access in the CFP.
Doubt this is a move to an all SEC-Big Ten playoff (or league) as keeping around a stable of hapless competition has its advantages. But it does reduce the amount of money that trickles down to the non-P2 conferences.
Also worth noting that G5 conferences usually play eight conference games so they will have an extra slot for a money game. Also some of them aren't going to have enough members to play a nine conference game schedule. This means that simply being the best G5 champion won't guarantee a CFP slot. I'm sure there will be a G5 slot of some kind left in the playoff to avoid any antitrust issues, but it'll probably end up being the last seed most years.
>>149817497
There's a playoff for late middle age golf?

Conferences ranked by their post covid SoR with their 2026 membership
SEC 33.98
Big Ten 42.49
Big 12 49.64
ACC 55.93
Pac-12 73.5
AAC 86.88
Sun Belt 87.07
CUSA 94.75
MWC 95.33
MAC 98.79