Big Ten and SEC Meeting Will Tighten P2’s Grip on Playoff Access

Presidents and athletic directors from the SEC and Big Ten are meeting next week in Nashville to begin - really, continue - the process of dividing up the college football landscape.

Those meetings will cover everything that matters for determining national champions, including non-conference scheduling and auto-bids to the CFP.

Expect the ACC and the Big XII to get a courtesy memo of the meeting results.

Pac 12, MWC, and AAC will probably learn about it along with the general public.

The Sun Belt, CUSA, and MAC are just happy that the NCAA hasnt been dissolved...yet.

Theres plenty to discuss as the conference realignment carrousel continues to spin.

The FSU and Clemson lawsuits seem like theyre going to settle.

A zombified Pac 12 will play on after biting the Mountain West hand that fed it.

For Miami fans, what merits repeating over, and over, and over again is how badly the Hurricanes need to leave the ACC.

With rare exceptions, every conference outside the P2 will be destined to only one CFP representative while the Big Ten and the SEC gobble up their conference champion bids plus the seven available at-large bids.

The consolidation of the elite, blue blood programs has assured that destiny.

Guess.

That.

School! You remember the Dating Game? Three single contestants would be hidden from the main player who would ask the contestants questions, trying to decide which bachelor or bachelorette to take on a show-sponsored date? Lets play...

Contestant Number 1! This team is off to a 5-0 start that includes a road win at a Big Ten team, a conference home win over an in-conference rival, and defeating the remainder of its competition by a combined score of 97-41.

While not a traditional football powerhouse, this team was a respectable 8-5 and 9-4 the past two seasons, so a 5-0 start didnt exactly come out of nowhere.

Contestant Number 2! This team completed its non-conference schedule 4-0, including two victories over Big XII teams considered rivals to this team.

While this start is a bit more surprising than Contestant Number 1 (this team was 3-9 last year), this teams head coach is in his tenth year with the program and is just three seasons removed from a conference championship.

Contestant Number 3! This team is also off to a 4-0 start, but its three non-conference games were all at home against two MAC teams and a Sun Belt team.

Its one conference game was a comfortable win over an unranked program coming off a 4-8 season.

But unlike Contestant Nos.

1 and 2, this team is a blue blood program whose coach has guided several teams to the playoffs.

So how do you think the voters are ranking these three contestants? Contestant No.

1 is not only unranked, but isnt receiving a single vote in the AP poll.

Contestant No.

2 is also unranked, but is at least receiving votes as the second team outside the top 25.

Contestant No.

3 is ranked third in the nation on reputation alone.

This is not to say that Duke (Contestant No.

1) or Pittsburgh (Contestant No.

2) should be ranked as high as Ohio State (Contestant No.

3) , but this illustrates the perception afforded to college football royalty compared to the college football peasants.

And thats the true problem with the ACC: a lack of royalty.

ACC and Big XII Reputation Suffers from Lack of Blue Blood Programs There are only three blue blood programs in the ACC: Miami, Clemson, and FSU.

There are other good ACC programs that have had periods of success, but no other ACC program has a national championship this century.

The last ACC program not named Miami, Clemson, or FSU to win a national title was Georgia Tech in 1990, who finished first in the Coaches Poll while Colorado finished first in the AP poll.

Maybe high school recruits didnt witness the last Miami national championship, but at least their parents and coaches did.

Thanks to conference re-alignment, the SEC now has seven blue blood programs that have won a national title sometime in the past 30 years (Alabama, Georgia, LSU, Texas, Oklahoma, Florida, Auburn, and Tennessee).

Each school continues to produce ranked, often highly ranked, teams with down years being infrequent and rarely lasting longer than a season or two.

The Big Ten has six-ish programs with national title pedigrees (Ohio State, Michigan, USC, and Penn St., plus a borderline Nebraska and Washington, given how far removed they are from their 90s era titles).

All in all, theres roughly 16-18 schools that start most seasons ranked based on program prestige alone .

All but four of those schools reside in the Big Ten or SEC.

The ACC has only three such schools.

The Big XII, whose most recent national champion is Colorado in 1990, has none.

Notre Dame is the only other blue blood team outside the P2.

Without Historically Elite Programs, Voters Devalue the Whole Conference It doesnt really matter if a blue blood program does well or not, each programs existence raises up the whole conference.

Georgia Tech and Boston College vaulted into the Top 25 because they benefited from FSUs pre-season Top 10 ranking.

Even though FSU is having a miserable year, their awfulness at least elevated two middle-tier ACC teams into national recognition.

The SEC has way more blue blood programs, which means more highly ranked pre-season teams providing schools like Kentucky, South Carolina, and Arkansas more chances to make a national splash and sneak their way into the playoffs.

But Miami isnt interested in occasionally sneaking into the playoffs.

Miami is looking to re-establish itself as a perennial contender.

Thats frankly not possible if the ACC is so weak that teams finishing with one or two losses cannot reliably earn an at-large bid to the playoffs.

Because the SEC and the Big Ten collected the majority of the blue blood programs, it will be virtually impossible for the ACC and the Big XII to regularly earn multiple bids.

This isnt basketball where Gonzaga or Memphis or Houston can reliably survive a surprise loss or two in a weak conference and still earn one of the 30-35 available at-large bids to March Madness.

Football has only seven at-large bids available.

There is zero room for error if Miami isnt playing several high prestige teams carrying high pre-season rankings.

A one loss ACC team will always finish behind a one loss Big Ten team and a one loss SEC team, and often times the one loss ACC team will finish behind two loss Big Ten and SEC teams.

Theres Zero Hope for the ACCs Status to Improve Now, the SEC and Big Ten are meeting to discuss non-conference scheduling that would truly block out the ACC and Big XII.

Miamis athletic department had done a pretty good job scheduling non-conference matchups against SEC and Big Ten teams like Florida (2013, 2019, 2024), Texas A&M (2022, 2023), Alabama (2021), Michigan State (2021), LSU (2018), and Nebraska (2014, 2015).

Miami fans should expect non-conference matchups with Big Ten and SEC teams to dwindle as the P2 conferences tighten their grip on college football.

Also dwindling is the ACCs likelihood of sending multiple teams to the CFP.

In the ACC, its conference championship or bust for the Hurricanes.

Even if Miami won out its regular season, but lost to Clemson in the ACC Championship game, could it earn an at-large bid to the CFP? Its far from guaranteed.

Voters would have to send Miami to the playoffs over likely one or two loss teams like Texas, Georgia, Tennessee, Missouri, LSU, Oregon, Penn State, USC, Ole Miss, and Notre Dame plus any potential one-loss Big XII teams like BYU, Utah, or Kansas State.

The ACC fields competitive teams, and going undefeated in the ACC is no cakewalk, but thats the only way Miami can assure itself a chance to play for a national championship.

If Miami is to build its program into a consistent playoff participant, it must get out of the ACC - and dont even think about the Big XII as an option, they know theyre doomed..

This article has been shared from the original article on stateoftheu, here is the link to the original article:

https://www.stateoftheu.com/2024/10/1/24258352/big-ten-and-sec-meeting-will-tighten-p2s-grip-on-playoff-access-acc-and-big-xii-will-be-one-bid