"Follow The Money" When It Comes To The College Football Playoff

In the movie All The President’s Men that described the Watergate political scandal of the early 1970s, the late actor Hal Holbrook played the character of Deep Throat who was providing critical information to Bob Woodward (played by Robert Redford) and Carl Bernstein (played by Dustin Hoffman). One of the famous lines from the movie uttered by Holbrook was “Follow the money“, providing clues as to how and why Watergate happened.

In the last week, Yahoo Sports writer Ross Dellenger provided updates as to possible (probable?) changes coming to The College Football Playoff for the 2026 season. If you have not yet done so, I highly recommend the following ~

Listen to @GarrettSearight’s perspectives on his S aturday Glory podcast about what the Big Ten and SEC got right, and got wrong, in their latest proposals
Listen to @TonyGerdeman and @TomOrr on The Buckeye Weekly Podcast for their thoughts on if the greed of the Big Ten and SEC will make college football worse

Among the most notable changes to the College Football Playoff that Dellenger has reported upon include both the Big Ten and SEC being given four automatic berths in the playoff, the elimination of conference championship games and the introduction of “play-in” games, as well as a possible scheduling agreement for non-conference games between the Big Ten and SEC. Listen to both of those recommended podcasts above and you will get more detail about these proposals.

Here is where I am making the tie to “follow the money.” Both the Big Ten — led by Tony Petitti, and the SEC — led by Greg Sankey, recognize that playing more games against each other is something that will be of interest to college football fans everywhere, and both conferences believe that ESPN (with the SEC) and FOX (with the Big Ten) will play handsomely for these games.

Let’s move into the four automatic bids proposal. I will simply say that I am against ANY conference getting multiple bids to the College Football Playoff automatically, and if this comes to pass, could wind up hurting either or both conferences.

Think about it hypothetically – if a Big Ten team plays an SEC team in non-conference and loses, then wins their other two non-conference games, that team is now at 2-1. Suppose that team suffers through a mediocre season, winds up at 7-5 after Big Ten conference play, and winds up fourth in the Big Ten conference standings. Should that team truly be rewarded with an automatic berth in the College Football Playoff?

Again, “follow the money” — the Big Ten and SEC would get the money for their respective conferences, no matter if they have a team or teams that are mediocre and probably undeserving of a playoff berth.

The last item that qualifies as a “follow the money” involves the idea of eliminating the conference championship games and having “play-in” games. Supposedly, the idea would be for the top two teams in each conference to be exempt, while the third-place team would play the sixth-place team for a College Football Playoff berth, and the fourth-place team would play the fifth-place team for a College Football berth.

If this had been in place this season within the Big Ten, Oregon and Penn State would have been exempt and automatically in the College Football Playoff. Third-place Indiana could have hosted sixth-place Iowa, while fourth-place Ohio State could have hosted fifth-place Illinois. It certainly seems intriguing, but follow the money. This is an opportunity for more television revenue for the conferences.

It remains to be seen when or if these changes will take place; Ross Dellenger has been updating his stories on these proposals quite frequently. I will simply ask you to remember the phrase “follow the money” when you are trying to figure out why the College Football Playoff changed so radically for the 2026 season.