The concept of a Huge Ten and SEC takeover within the School Soccer Playoff might quickly come to fruition with momentum constructing towards additional growth, in line with Yahoo Sports activities, that includes a bevy of automated bids for every convention.
The contract for the 12-team format and its recently-adopted “straight-seeding” mannequin ends after the 2025 season. Energy convention commissioners met earlier this month with future playoff codecs main the dialogue and “rising” help for the Huge Ten and SEC’s proposal.
The 2 leagues reportedly may have important affect the subsequent spherical of growth and the way the format performs out given monetary ramifications and sole voting energy. Underneath the 16-team proposal, eight auto-bids from the Huge Ten and SEC exist — 4 from every league — together with two ACC qualifiers, two Huge 12, one Group of 5 and three at-large groups.
SEC spring conferences start this week with the exploration of a nine-game convention schedule on the front-burner. The one manner the SEC would agree so as to add a ninth convention recreation could be extra inclusion in future playoff brackets together with the expectation of a much bigger payday from its TV accomplice.
There may be additionally dialogue surrounding the Huge Ten and SEC holding play-in video games throughout convention championship weekend yearly to find out the opposite auto-bids. Basically, the 2 groups who seem within the league title recreation could be two of the auto-bids with the convention’s No. 3 and No. 6 groups deciding one other together with a No. 4 vs. No. 5 matchup.
The Huge Ten and SEC are additionally in favor of the thought of a “double-bye” for the No. 1 and No. 2 seeds within the bracket. Within the proposed 16-team bracket, the primary spherical would encompass two video games — the sixteenth seed towards the thirteenth seed and the fifteenth seed towards the 14th seed.
The winners of these video games would transfer on to the second spherical, the place the 15-14 victor would play the No. 4 seed on its dwelling subject and the 16-13 winner would face off with the No. 3 seed on the street. There could be six second-round video games general with the 10-7, 11-6, 9-8 an 12-5 rounding out the slate.
16-team CFP in 2024 with straight seeding, proposed format
| Spherical | Matchup |
|---|---|
| Spherical 1 | No. 16 Clemson vs. No. 13 Miami |
| No. 15 South Carolina vs. No. 14 Ole Miss | |
| Spherical 2 | No. 9 Boise State vs. No. 8 Indiana |
| No. 12 Arizona State vs. No. 5 Notre Dame | |
| No. 15/14 winner vs. No. 4 Penn State | |
| No. 10 SMU vs. No. 7 Tennessee | |
| No. 11 Alabama vs. No. 6 Ohio State | |
| No. 16/13 winner vs. No. 3 Notre Dame | |
| Byes | No. 1 Oregon and No. 2 Georgia |
Former Alabama coach Nick Saban is in favor of playoff growth, endorsing the thought of a 14 or 16-team subject in 2026 and past.
“Again within the years, I used to be by no means for increasing the playoff as a result of I believed bowl video games have been actually essential to the historical past and custom of school soccer, however now that we’ve got expanded the playoff, now the bowl video games have taken a much less important position,” Saban mentioned final week mentioned at a charity occasion. “So I feel increasing the playoff and having as many groups concerned as we are able to with out taking part in too many video games for the gamers — I feel that is somewhat little bit of a priority — might be a superb factor.”
SEC commissioner Greg Sankey pumped the brakes on future growth being a foregone conclusion for 2026 earlier this yr, citing seeding disadvantages as a major motive. Nevertheless, that thought course of seemingly modified now that the brand new seeding mannequin will play out in 2025 and assuredly reward groups who’ve conquered robust schedules and end inside the highest 4.
