Lane Kiffin Says 'Best System' Would Be 16-Team CFP Bracket With 'Best' 16 Teams

Ole Miss football head coach Lane Kiffin believes a College Football Playoff that includes the 16 best teams and doesn't award automatic bids would be the "best" postseason system.

Kiffin made his remarks while chatting with reporters at SEC Spring Meetings in Destin, Florida, on Tuesday.

SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey also told reporters that he spoke with the conference's coaches in depth about the 16-team model.

"They talked about -- I'll call it a 5+11 model -- and our own ability to earn those berths," Sankey said. "... At the coaching level, the question is, why wouldn't that be fine? Why wouldn't we do that? We talked about 16 with them. So, good conversation, not a destination, but the first time I've had the ability to go really in depth with ideas with them."

The first year of the 12-team CFP (2024) offered automatic bids to the champions of the top five conferences. The top four teams from that group of five get automatic byes into the quarterfinals, while the fifth team is ranked on its merit among the rest of the non-automatic bids.

That caused some issues last year. For example, ninth-ranked Boise State got the No. 3 seed and 12th-ranked Arizona State got the No. 4 seed. In addition, the 16th-ranked team, Clemson, got in by virtue of winning the ACC. Meanwhile, third-ranked Texas didn't get a bye and moved down to No. 5, and fourth-ranked Penn State ended up at No. 6.

A 16-team system based on merit alone would obviously solve that problem. Of note, if the CFP was based on Kiffin's proposal, then Ole Miss would have gotten into the field. The Rebels finished 14th in the final CFP ranking, but the team would have needed to land 10th to get into the final bracket.

We'll see if any more changes arise to the bracket. We already know of one, as the CFP will now move to a straight-seeding model, preventing lower-seeded teams that won their conference from getting byes.

So that will happen in 2025, but the question is what's ahead in 2026, when big changes are expected, per Yahoo Sports' Ross Dellenger. A 16-team format is in the talks.

"Officials from the Big Ten and SEC — the two conference controlling the format starting next year — are supporting a 16-team playoff that features multiple automatic qualifiers per conference," Dellenger wrote.

"The format — dubbed the '4-4-2-2-1' model — grants the SEC and Big Ten four automatic qualifiers each, as well as two each to the Big 12 and ACC. Then one bid would go to the highest-ranked Group of Six conference champion and there would be three at-large selections — one of those contractually designated for Notre Dame if the Irish finish inside the top 16 of the rankings."

We'll see what happens soon enough, but at this point, it wouldn't be a shock at all to see the bracket move to 16 teams. The big question is how that pool is chosen.