SEC Football: Commissioner Mike Slive Stands Tall, Gets Playoff He Wants

The 11 Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) commissioners and Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick announced on Wednesday that they will recommend a four-team-seeded playoff for the postseason, CBSSports.com reported. That playoff system will feature the "best four" teams as chosen by a selection committee.

If you see SEC commissioner Mike Slive grinning from ear to ear anytime soon, that's probably the reason why.

Essentially, the SEC got what it wants. It gets a four-team playoff, it avoids the plus-one and there isn't a requirement to be a conference champion in the outline.

CBSSports.com reports that the selection committee—whose participants are yet to be determined—would choose the best four teams with an emphasis being placed on conference champions.

Whether they want to admit it now or not, that "emphasis" placed on conference champions will evolve into, essentially, a tiebreaker.

Short term, that may appear to benefit the SEC, which is clearly the top conference in college football. But Slive's goal isn't selfish.

He said after the meetings on Wednesday that the health of the game of college football was the priority of the participants in the meetings. 

As it should be.

If a playoff was only limited to conference champions, No. 10 Wisconsin would have received an invite. Don't get me wrong, the Badgers were a good team that suffered two incredibly heartbreaking losses. But they were still losses.

The Badgers didn't earn it during the season, and if they were allowed to compete for the crystal football, the importance of the regular season would be negated.

If college football as a sport is healthy, the conferences underneath that umbrella will be healthy as well. Sure, conference commissioners have their own self-interest to look out for, but in the end, the bigger picture wins out.

We will all be better off because of it.

The only item that Slive budged on was the committee placing emphasis on conference champions. That's a slight deviation from his desire to have the top four, regardless of conference affiliation.

Depending on who makes up the selection committee, that emphasis might not matter.

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