MIRAMAR BEACH, Fla. — Stopping to chat as he headed to the valet desk in the lobby of the Hilton Sandestin, an SEC football coach was asked how large a College Football Playoff field he preferred.
“Twelve would be fine if they didn’t give away spots,” the coach said. “If it was the 12 best teams.”
Yes, James Madison, Tulane and the Group of 6 conferences were the primary target of that remark, but make no mistake: Many in the SEC believe the Big 12 is getting more credit than it deserves, too.
Amid lingering questions about how the committee is using elements like strength of schedule and a new strength of record metric in its rankings, the Big 12’s top teams became the targets.
About a week after Texas coach Steve Sarkisian said his team’s backups could run the table against Texas Tech’s schedule, the SEC took its complaints straight to CFP staffers during conference spring meetings.
The coaches and athletic directors’ meeting with the College Football Playoff’s officials on Tuesday largely centered around a need for clarity on how the committee would compare the strength of SEC schedules, featuring nine conference games for the first time this fall, to schedules from the Big 12 or ACC.
The fear among coaches in the room — the league’s four new coaches largely stayed silent — was that an SEC team with three losses would often fall below a Big 12 or ACC team with two losses despite playing what they believe to be a much more difficult schedule.
Representatives from the CFP, whose 13-person selection committee will feature three new members this year, couldn’t offer any conclusive explanation for how a season that hasn’t happened yet would be evaluated.
However, coaches and athletic directors were shown data projecting a 16-team and 24-team Playoff field over the 2025 season. In a 24-team CFP, the SEC would have had seven teams, or 29 percent of the field, as opposed to the 42 percent the league had last season with five of the 12 participants.
The Big 12 had just one team in the CFP last season for the second year in a row. Texas Tech earned a bye and the No. 4 seed by winning the Big 12 with a 12-1 record that included four victories against teams (BYU twice, Utah, Houston) that finished in the selection committee’s top 25. Texas Tech was then shut out by Oregon in the Orange Bowl quarterfinal.
BYU (11-2) ended up being the second team out of the CFP behind Notre Dame, ranked No. 11 ahead of Texas (9-3) and Vanderbilt (10-2) from the SEC. The Cougars had two victories against teams that finished ranked (Utah, Arizona) and lost twice to Texas Tech.
SEC coaches also noted that Mississippi State, which finished 1-7 in the SEC and 5-8 overall, beat 2024 Big 12 champion Arizona State in an early-season game. The Sun Devils, who battled injuries all year, finished 8-5 overall and 6-3 in the Big 12.
Not many coaches directly called out the Big 12 schools publicly, but it was easy to figure out to whom they were alluding when they referenced a school that played no top-10 teams and made the Playoff.
“I would hope strength of schedule will continue to factor in even more heavily than what it is, currently,” South Carolina coach Shane Beamer said. “I mean, if you just look at, Texas Tech lost to Arizona State last season, if I’m not mistaken, who lost to Mississippi State, right?”
When SEC coaches agreed to add a ninth conference game and it wasn’t paired with CFP expansion — Florida coach Jon Sumrall said some coaches felt misled by the field remaining at 12 for this year — there was concern across the conference that the change would cost the SEC at-large bids. The eight bids the SEC has earned in the two years of the 12-team Playoff are the most of any conference.
Beamer said they had a “healthy discussion” with the CFP on Tuesday afternoon, which he called “enlightening.”
Arkansas athletic director Hunter Yurachek, who is the committee chair, and the CFP’s new senior advisor for football Justin Fuente, a former head coach at Memphis and Virginia Tech, also spoke to the coaches and athletic directors on Tuesday and fielded questions about how the committee operates.
There was no discussion this week of a timeline for a decision by the SEC on its Playoff format preference. Any changes to the CFP must be decided by Dec. 1 to be enacted for the 2027 season.
“We haven’t polled each other or put our heads together to figure out a universal policy or platform we’re on,” Beamer said. “But I would say most of the coaches are in agreement of more access, the better. Particularly, not quite understanding where strength of schedule comes into play, particularly in our league.”
Bedlam still on hold
Coaches and athletic directors also came into the meeting with CFP officials in search of best practices for in-game strategy and nonconference scheduling that would lead to the CFP metrics looking upon teams more favorably.
While that and Playoff expansion are uncertain, schools are taking a more cautious approach to nonconference scheduling.
For Oklahoma, that means restarting the Bedlam series with in-state rival Oklahoma State is not even a discussion yet. The series ended when Oklahoma left the Big 12 for the SEC two seasons ago.
New Sooners athletic director Roger Denny said he has not spoken with Oklahoma State about getting the Cowboys back on the football schedule.
“Yeah, for sure, it’s huge for our state and our fans,” Denny said. “We’ve said pretty openly that that’s something that you know we think is important to Oklahoma, the state, not just the institution, and so if we had an opportunity to do that and do it in a way that doesn’t limit our opportunities down the line, certainly that’s something we’d want to look into.”
Right now, there’s just not enough clarity.
“This is so new, you’re seeing new metrics added to it every year, and you’re seeing now divergent scheduling practices between the conferences, and so I think it’s just going to take time to see how those things get measured by the committee and what gets rewarded and incentivized,” said Denny, who previously worked at Illinois as a deputy AD.
A rash of potential marquee nonconference games have gotten canceled over the last 12 months or so as schools reassess the best path to a CFP spot. Most recently, South Carolina canceled a home-and-home with North Carolina. The Gamecocks still have in-state ACC rival Clemson on the schedule.
“But until every other team in the SEC or every other Power 4 team is going to play 11 Power 4 games, it’d be a competitive disadvantage to us to do that,” Beamer said.
Georgia’s Kirby Smart was aggressive in his scheduling before the SEC went to a nine-game schedule and still has home-and-homes planned with Ohio State and Clemson. But those are also in danger — and will perhaps be replaced by single neutral-site games, a swap that may be happening with Florida State after that home-and-home was recently canceled — because of Playoff concerns.
“I just hate that I feel like we’re all gravitating away from these because of appearance to the (selection) committee,” Smart said. “I gotta win. I can’t have a loss.”
The Big Ten is the one Power 4 conference that does not mandate each team schedule at least one nonconference game against another P4 opponent. So what’s the difference between the Big Ten and SEC?
“It just means more, man,” Denny said with a smile. “No, I think it’s, like, you can look at the schedules and see there are certainly schools in the Big Ten that have adopted a mindset of every opportunity they get to schedule their own game, they’re going to do their best to schedule a win, and so I think you see a little bit less of that in our conference, you see some real marquee matchups that some of our teams have been willing to play in, and so I think those are great for the sport and great for the fan bases. We have to make sure that those are just as great for our opportunity to get to the postseason.”
Denny quickly added that his former employer Illinois was not among the Big Ten schools scheduling that way.
Lane Kiffin rule
The Senate bill announced this week by Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) includes language that prevents coaches from leaving to take a job with a different program during the season, which would be similar to NFL rules and noteworthy in light of Lane Kiffin leaving Ole Miss for LSU in advance of the Rebels’ College Football Playoff run last year.
SEC commissioner Greg Sankey said that was not an issue he was asking lawmakers to address.
“In our presidents’ and chancellors’ room, in the aftermath, it was we have to have a more systematic way for transition of coaching roles, particularly focused on football, which I understand is in this new legislation,” Sankey said. “I’m a federal government is less type of person, philosophically, but if that’s something that helps from an orderliness standpoint that seems healthy.”
Those types of restrictions could lead to schools being less inclined to hire coaches who can’t start immediately. That might be a good thing for coaches.
“I was doing two jobs for three weeks, which is the dumbest thing I’ve done in my life,” new Florida coach Jon Sumrall said. “Like, stupid.”
Sumrall coached Tulane the last two seasons, including a Playoff appearance last year. Unlike Ole Miss with Kiffin, Tulane was good with Sumrall finishing out the season after accepting the Florida job. The Green Wave lost to Ole Miss, coached by Pete Golding, in the first round of the CFP.
Sumrall was recruiting for both schools, trying to build a staff and retain his Florida roster while preparing to play the Rebels.
“The NFL has a really cool model where they play the season, and then the season ends,” Sumrall said. “Then, coaches take jobs. Then, they do roster turnover. Then, they have some practices. Then, they play the season again. We’re like doing it all at once … Like, golly, that’s like mixing tequila, bourbon and beer all at the same time. It’s going to make you sick.”
Sankey putting coaches on notice
The SEC had a friendly fire issue heading into Destin, with coaches carping about each other, or at least about one specific school, through the media. Lane Kiffin’s comments about Ole Miss’ racial history and Steve Sarkisian’s “basket weaving” crack about Ole Miss’ transfer standards led the headlines.
Sankey sought to put a stop to it this week.
“I had clear conversations about expectations and care and relationships,” Sankey said. “Those in leadership positions need to function like leaders in their conduct and commentary.”
Kiffin appeared to get the message. He was unusually dry in his press conference, saying he only had thoughts on a few things. When a reporter followed up by asking what those were, Kiffin pointed to LSU’s sports information director.
“He said those were the last two questions,” Kiffin said with a smile, walking out.
Sarkisian, meanwhile, said he was not reprimanded for his dig at Ole Miss. He also tried to clarify his comments, which were about Texas only being able to take 50 percent of a transfer’s credits towards a degree, while other schools could take more. The regret, for Sarkisian, was throwing the art of basket weaving under the bus.
“I could’ve used macroeconomics,” Sarkisian said. “I could’ve use engineering. It wouldn’t have mattered. The class was irrelevant, that was poor choice of words on my part.”
SEC media days will be July 20-23 in Tampa, Fla.
Can football continue to sustain an entire athletic department?
Sharing television revenue with athletes has meant financial belt-tightening on every campus, but it has also meant asking difficult questions about what athletic departments want to be. Earlier this spring, Arkansas cut its tennis programs, then reversed course when donors emerged to help finance the program. But as roster budgets grow, every campus is wrestling with how to make the money work if football can no longer subsidize the costs of dozens of other sports.
“I think way too many student-athletes get opportunities in college because of Olympic sports or non-revenue sports, and if we have to be the catalyst for that, because of finances, then let’s do it,” Smart said.
But if the costs of paying players continue to rise, coaching salaries refuse to budge and universities continue to upgrade facilities, athletic departments may no longer be able to commit to the same number of sports they once did. That was a major concern voiced among athletic directors.
“That’s information I’ve shared at the highest levels in D.C., that we want our sports inventory to stay as it is,” Sankey said. “If regulating the marketplace is illegal or can’t be achieved, that starts to threaten, as Kirby described, the other sports.”
Nine-game schedule regrets
Smart had always been an advocate for going to a nine-game schedule. Now it’s upon him this season, and this week he confessed, “There might be some regret.”
Several other coaches tied it to a specific gripe. When they were here last year, they left with the impression that if the SEC went to nine games, the playoff would expand to 16.
“If not, you’re just adding a conference game and you’re going to get half the teams in this league an extra loss,” Beamer said.
Asked if he now regretted going to nine games, Beamer acknowledged there were other things at play, such as ESPN giving the SEC more money to add a ninth game.
“But at the same time, it’s a challenge,” Beamer said.
The SEC move came last August after years of debate and was announced one day after the CFP committee agreed to tweak some of its schedule strength criteria. Now coaches worry about adding eight losses to the conference.
“I think nine games is going to be very, very difficult for the SEC,” said Missouri’s Eli Drinkwitz, who also said he understood going to nine games would lead to Playoff expansion. “But it is what it is, and ready to tackle. And we ain’t undoing it. It took us six years to get here.”
Sankey said his mind wouldn’t have changed if he’d known the CFP wouldn’t expand and said the decisions were on different timelines. The CFP decision was going to take until Dec. 1 — and a month later, it turned out — while the decision on nine games had to be made during the summer to start planning for the 2026 season.
“We couldn’t wait that long to make an 8- or 9-game decision, really, out of respect for nonconference games,” Sankey said. “And so the potential was there. Would I have preferred? Sure.”
Pocket watching
Sarkisian said last week he thought every SEC team was spending at least $30 million on their roster.
“I would say he’s probably not that far off,” Beamer said. “I think there’s a big range, from are you around that 30 mark, or are you a lot more than that 30 mark?”
In the current landscape, that’s the price of doing business. Refusing to pay means taking the field on fall Saturdays with a roster unable to compete. But the total cost of a roster has yet to settle at an equilibrium. The big question for coaches and athletic directors: Where does it land? And how will that reshape how the books are balanced at an athletic department?
“If we don’t find a way to create some level of regulation within the market, a lot of people are going to go bankrupt,” Texas A&M coach Elko said. “And if this thing goes from where it’s at to up another 20 percent, up another year or two and a half years away from having an NFL budget, that’s more than the TV revenue for all of our university. And when that happens, you’re going to have some serious questions about how they get funded.”
The newest SEC-Big Ten battleground: Punts
Near the end of his time with reporters on Tuesday, Missouri coach Eli Drinkwitz had a request: Somebody ask me about the new rule changes around punting.
An offseason rule change limits the ability to disguise fake punt formations by deeming players who are in the formation but are not wearing Nos. 50-79 to be ineligible if they are the two players on the line of scrimmage next to the snapper. Those players also cannot go into motion.
It was a hot topic at Big Ten meetings last week, and ESPN reported the league’s coaches voted 18-0 against the rule, with Iowa coach Kirk Ferentz saying the uniform changes needed to adhere to the rules would make it look like a “clown show.”
“It’s kind of a byproduct of college football right now where people don’t participate in the process and they get all upset about it and throw fits,” Drinkwitz said.
He noted that Big Ten football executive A.J. Edds heads up the rules committee that put the punt rule on the agenda. Drinkwitz said when the rules committee sent out the proposal, it had support from 65 percent of respondents.
“The football oversight committee has two football coaches on it. One of them is in the Big Ten. I don’t understand all the consternation about it. One coach said it’s going to be a clown show. Well, if you want to turn football into a clown show because you want to run peolpe off the field and put in zip-up jerseys so you can have a formation you wouldn’t ever use on first, second or third down just for fourth down, that’s the intent of the rule,” Drinkwitz said.
He also added that the argument against the rule for player safety reasons was “a joke” because the NFL lines up in the same formation for punts.
“Complain about something you could have been a process to, and when it doesn’t go your way, what’s next?” Drinkwitz said. “Maybe they can find a local judge that allows them to use whatever punt formation they want to use.”
.webp?ssl=1 "Funniest moment, best radio message and much more – F1’s 2025 alternative awards")
