TV ratings could be criteria for automatic College Football Playoff bids, per report

It’s not exactly a secret that the NCAA is looking to tweak the College Football Playoff format.

Everyone loved the 12-team playoff, even if ESPN’s coverage of the inaugural event didn’t leave them feeling warm and fuzzy on the inside. It didn’t exactly take an oracle to know that the seeding and the current process for automatic bids would upset a few folks, as the eventual National Championship winners, the Ohio State Buckeyes, were a No. 9 seed.

Something had to give. But conference commissioners have been at this since the second round of the first-ever 12-team CFP. Action Network’s Brett McMurphy reported at the time that conference commissioners would have “in-depth discussions” regarding the structure of the 12-team format, particularly when it comes to seeding.

As currently constructed, the top four seeds in the College Football Playoff — each of which receives a first-round bye — are required to be conference champions, creating a conundrum in which some of the format’s lesser teams can benefit from one of its biggest advantages.

The SEC and Big Ten wanted to address this. In February, ESPN’s Heather Dinich reported that SEC commissioner Greg Sankey and Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti want to see a “straight seeding” from the College Football Playoff committee ranking while guaranteeing spots for five champions.

Paul Finebaum thought that was “completely wrong,” bemoaning the possibility that the two power conferences would ensure they’d get more automatic qualifiers than other conferences. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the two biggest conferences in the sport would push that, but what did come as a surprise is a nugget of criteria that Dinich dropped, as she heads to Dallas to cover the annual spring meetings.

“One possibility, which could be viewed as a compromise, is having conferences earn automatic bids through their play each season. A model in which each Power 4 league can earn guaranteed spots through a combination of its teams’ overall records — and maybe even TV ratings, according to a source — could be presented. The highest-ranked conferences would earn the most automatic bids.”

Come again?

If that sounds less like a decision from a competition committee and more like something cooked up in a boardroom full of media execs, you’re not imagining things. The idea that a league’s playoff spot could be tied to TV ratings isn’t just a bad look — it’s a full-on red flag. This isn’t about crowning the best team anymore; it’s about crafting a TV product, where the competition takes a backseat to eyeballs.

But, again, Dinich did say “maybe even,” so nothing is set in stone, at least not yet.

And as usual, is it worth asking if ratings are driving the bus?

Change is coming. But the real question isn’t what the playoff will look like in 2026. It’s whether college football is still pretending this is about competition, or if it’s just about who delivers the largest audiences.

Then again, maybe this is the antidote to the Indianas and SMUs of the world sneaking into the dance. Deserving or not, they don’t move the needle. And in this new era, that might be all that matters.