SEC Football: Why Commissioner Mike Slive Is Suddenly Hesitant About Playoff

Now that the college football season is over, it's time to discuss a playoff. The offseason is usually the appropriate time to try to get together to hammer out a plan that will eliminate that god-awful BCS format.

The Big Ten conference is the most recent to present a plan that would be a new way of determining the college football champion every year. If this proposal goes through, the top four teams in the BCS pool would end up battling it out to determine who the true champion is. The top two seeds would get home games instead of them being played on a neutral field.

SEC commissioner Mike Slive hasn't shot the idea down quite yet, but he doesn't seem too thrilled at the recent idea the Big Ten has put on the table.

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Really a lot of this discussion is premature, and I want to respect the process that we're in. We've had four-year formats since we started. We've done it on the basis of four years, so each four-year period you have to sit down and decide what format is going to be going forward. So we have decided to sit down and talk about this from every different side.

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The new college football cycle takes place in 2014. So, while this plan could possibly be approved as early as this season, it wouldn't take effect until then. This, of course, means we still have a good two seasons left of the BCS regardless of what happens with these meetings.

However, what's interesting is that Slive and the SEC actually wanted a playoff in 2008. They threw their own proposal out there and it was eventually shot down by every conference except the ACC. It was a plus-one that would take the top four teams, similar to the idea that the Big Ten has. The main difference is that the semifinal games would be played on neutral sites, such as BCS bowls are, and the two winners would play for the national championship.

So, why is Slive now hesitant about a playoff?

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What would it look like and whether it's actually going to happen, all of that is premature. I think we need the time to sit down and analyze it. We need time to take ideas back to our respective conferences and...a decision to be made sometime later this year as we begin to talk about the...next format.

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To me it's real simple. The SEC has won the last six BCS National Championships and has won seven overall. They have without question been the most successful conference and have benefited most from the BCS format. Why would you want to change something that is making you more successful than anyone else?

The BCS poll absolutely loves the SEC and in turn the conference should love the system that is currently in place.

Another thing that could worry the SEC with this proposal is the fact that the top two teams would get a home playoff game. The SEC has several talented teams, but you put Florida, Alabama or LSU in Michigan or Ohio State in the middle of January and there could be a problem. Many of those kids on those teams have never seen snow, now they'd end up having to play in it. That situation would not favor the SEC.

After the success the SEC has had with the BCS and the way things look for the future, anybody associated with that conference would like things to continue. Many think the BCS is a broken system, but to the SEC it's perfectly fine.

Randy Chambers is a B/R featured columnist that covers college football and the NFL. You can contact him @Randy_Chambers or [e-mail].