A College Football Playoffocalypse

And a personality test for what your preferred CFP model says about you

Here’s All Hat, Some Cattle. A weekly Friday sports column on DWWBYa in the vein of what you used to read on the back page of Sports Illustrated. It’s one of the many reasons I hope you’ll consider upgrading your subscription to a paid one.

---

There was a College Football Playoffocalypse this week.

Things came to a head at the SEC Spring Meetings in Destin, Florida, when commissioner Greg Sankey issued a blistering response to other conferences critical of the SEC’s consolidation of power. He also teased at leaving the NCAA completely.

Here’s the skinny. The conferences agreed to do away with automatic byes for the 12-team playoff in 2025, moving to a straight seeding model. Now, the war over how an inevitable 16-team playoff should look is heating up.

The Big Ten and SEC are pushing for more guaranteed spots than the other conferences and the Group of Five, favoring a 4-4-2-2-1 model which gives them more automatic spots. Sankey hates that a 1 loss team like Indiana got in over SEC teams like Alabama and Ole Miss. "It's clear that not losing is more important than playing quality opponents," Sankey said to reporters on Tuesday.

In response to the SEC’s preferences, a 5+11 model—five conference champions, with 11 at-large teams—has gained momentum. Brett Yormark and the Big 12 like it, but without some kind of protection, they could be looking at years where seven SEC teams make it. The next battleground: how those 11 at-large bids will be decided.

But I’m worn out by it all, the ideas and the hand wringing. So I’ve made a personality test of sorts.

Here’s what your preferred playoff model says about you—and what you should do about it.