Like it or not, the College Football Playoff is set to expand to 24 teams starting with the 2027 season.
Once that happens, Fox college football analyst Joel Klatt expects the SEC and Big Ten to reach a non-conference scheduling agreement, which will be announced shortly after the CFP expansion becomes official.
“There are programming agreements that will be in place once this thing officially develops,” Klatt told KTCK-FM 96.7 The Ticket in Dallas on Wednesday. “The next thing that’s going to happen almost immediately is we’re going to do some scheduling deals between the SEC and the Big Ten — high-end games, mid-tier games, low-end games — and we’re going to expand valuable non-conference games, far exceeding what we have now.”
Big Ten Commissioner Tony Petitti promised his league would commit to a minimum of 10 Power 4 games if the field expands to 24. “We need to play more good games. I think we’ve been very clear about that. We think the season can start a lot better than it is. We’re committed to that. If we get to a 24-team playoff, you’ll see a lot more competitive games scheduled,” he said earlier this month. The Big Ten is the only conference that does not require 10 Power 4 opponents; Indiana, Nebraska, Penn State, USC and Washington have not played a team from the ACC, SEC, Big 12 or Notre Dame this season.
Although ESPN is expected to retain control of the playoffs once they expand to 24, Fox has openly pushed for a 24-team CFP as a way to create better non-conference inventory. “One of the big problems against college football is the first three weeks. It’s actually hard to find good games,” Fox Sports CEO Eric Shanks said in April. “If you don’t get penalized for playing those big non-conference games early and there are more teams that can make the (24-team) playoffs, the schedule gets better in September because you won’t get penalized for playing good games.” The only Big Ten appearance among the 10 most-watched games during the first quarter of the season was Ohio State’s trip to Texas (aired on ABC), Wisconsin’s neutral-site game with Notre Dame (an Irish home game, and thus part of Notre Dame’s NBC contract), and Michigan’s home game with Oklahoma, aired on Fox.
In an SEC-Big Ten challenge, hypothetically, eight SEC home games would be broadcast on the ESPN family of networks, two of the eight Big Ten home games would be broadcast on CBS and NBC, while the rest would be broadcast on Fox, Fox Sports 1 or BTN, of which Fox owns 61 percent.
Although competitors on the field, the SEC and Big Ten are partners in governing the College Football Playoff. These two conferences, and only these two, hold veto power over the CFP format thanks to its current contract (which extends through the 2031 season), and a programming alliance would serve an additional purpose beyond increasing early-season viewership and ticket sales. If they were to play exclusively against each other, the SEC and Big Ten would prevent the ACC and Big 12 from playing all 34 schools from both conferences and thus make it more difficult for ACC and Big 12 teams to pick up bids to the 24-team event.
Gn sports
