Big 12’s CFP expansion vote is first step in calling SEC’s separation bluff

Bullet point summary by AI

• The Big 12 coaches have unanimously voiced support for expanding the College Football Playoff to 24 teams.
• Their move follows provocative statements from several SEC coaches about their conference’s dominance and independence.
• The response from within the SEC reveals a lack of unity behind those bold claims, raising questions about the conference’s true stance.

Conferences not named the SEC are feeling more inclined to push for expansion of the College Football Playoff from 12 teams to 24 teams. On Thursday, Big 12 coaches unanimously voted to express their support for the larger field which would’ve seen five programs qualify for the postseason tournament instead of just the one — champion Texas Tech.

The informal vote comes on the heels of incendiary comments made by members of the SEC about their conference’s superiority and the insane proposition it could survive on its own outside the NCAA. Georgia head coach Kirby Smart explicitly suggested the latter at a press conference on Tuesday.

Smart’s totally un-smart secession idea was (presumably) a veiled threat in the face of the ever-growing likelihood the CFP will grow to include double the amount of teams that participated in the last two editions. It’s clear he and other coaches like Texas’ Steve Sarkisian and LSU’s Lane Kiffin, who suggested SEC backups would go undefeated in other conferences, feel threatened by an increased chance of being upset in an early playoff round.

SEC not unified in crazy CFB secession suggestion

The Big 12 publishing its coaches’ preference for an expanded postseason field can be viewed as the conference daring the SEC to back up its talk. Though, for now, those few with puffed up chests don’t appear to have a consensus among their colleagues.

“In the SEC we have to be one,” LSU athletic director Verge Ausberry told ESPN Thursday during the conference’s spring meetings in Florida. “We fight each other on the fields: Saturday nights, basketball games, baseball weekends, track and field, that’s when we compete. After that, this is one. When you start breaking up and doing our own things, that hurts our conference.”

Ausberry didn’t name names, especially not his own head football coach, but he was clearly referencing Kiffin, Sarkisian and Smart’s recent comments. What was clear is the disunity within the conference and that’s only been highlighted by SEC commissioner Greg Sankey’s equally inflamatory approach.

“If you look at the entirety of our league, we are by far the most competitive, the strongest football league by far,” he told reporters Wednesday in Florida. Ironically, Sankey was silent on how he handled Kiffin, Sarkisian and Smart’s controversial claims.

Understandably, Sankey is going to back his conference which has historically been dominant in football. It’s just cringe when its rival, the Big Ten, has won four of the last five national championships since the advent of NIL, the transfer portal and the expanded CFP.

We’ll only know whether the SEC is serious about making a huge stink if and only if the CFP is actually expanded as large as 24-teams. The NCAA is already on shaky ground to begin with as the business of college sports evolves ever-rapidly but an SEC secession would probably shatter the sport altogether.

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