Report: SEC, Big Ten to Discuss CFB Scheduling Partnership; Eye 4 Automatic CFP Bids

Athletic directors from the Big Ten and SEC reportedly will meet in Nashville next week to discuss a potential scheduling agreement going forward, according to ESPN's Heather Dinich, alongside the desire of each conference to secure four automatic bids to the College Football Playoff when the new contract begins in 2026.

"There is hope that we can definitely move the needle and make some progress on different things," a Big Ten source told Dinich.

One sticking point to any negotiations could come down to the number of league games the SEC and Big Ten play. Currently, the SEC plays eight league games per school, while the Big Ten plays nine. Any agreement could hinge on the SEC going to the nine-game model.

"If we're all going to figure this out, we've got to be on equal footing," a source told Dinich.

Another topic could be the possibility of reworking—or eliminating altogether—the 13-person selection committee utilized by the CFP to determine its participants.

"I think anything we can do to take the subjectivity of a committee off the table is really helpful," an SEC source told ESPN. "We may not be able to completely get rid of subjectivity the more we can minimize it. And so Tony Petitti's idea of multiple automatic spots for a conference has a lot of value. I'm not sure four is the right number."

The end goal for the SEC and Big Ten, unsurprisingly, is to ensure that as many of their institutions as possible make the CFP each season.

"I'm for anything that gives us the maximum number of postseason opportunities," that SEC source told Dinich. "I don't count bowl games as postseason opportunities."

The CFP format will feature 12 teams for the next two seasons, though there has been a push to move it to 14 teams at some point in the future.

Conference champions from the SEC, Big Ten, ACC, Big 12 and the next highest-ranked Group of Five champion will receive automatic qualification, while Notre Dame "will have protections that will survive regardless of the ultimate format," as Dinich and Pete Thamel reported in March.

But that gave the SEC and Big Ten more power at the CFP negotiating table going forward. As the ESPN pair reported, "With those ironclad guarantees, the other commissioners and Notre Dame leadership surrendered the bulk of the control over the format to the SEC and Big Ten as 'part of the give-and-take,' according to a source."

In other words, if the SEC and Big Ten want to guarantee themselves a number of automatic bids each season, they may have the leverage to do so. It's hard to imagine the rest of college football acquiescing to a pair of conferences taking eight of the 12 playoff berths available, which would only leave one at-large berth on the table for schools outside of the SEC and Big Ten.

Even if the format moves to 14 teams, it would hardly be palatable for the ACC or Big 12 to have the SEC and Big Ten soak up a guaranteed eight berths, leaving only a pool of three at-large berths to fight over (and only two on years where Notre Dame was a playoff team).

The new format was always going to favor the SEC and Big Ten, which loaded up on premier institutions heading into the 2024 season (USC, Oregon, Washington and UCLA joined the Big Ten; Oklahoma and Texas signed on with the SEC). Just how much it favors the two conferences remains to be seen.