Last spring, during intense and, at times, heated negotiations over the future of the College Football Playoff, leaders of the Big Ten and SEC threatened to create their own postseason system if they were not granted a majority of CFP revenue and full authority over the playoff format.
In the end, executives of the 10 FBS leagues and Notre Dame signed a memorandum of understanding handing control over to college football’s two richest conferences.
Soon, they are expected to exercise that control.
Within the SEC and Big Ten, momentum is building to further expand the playoff to 14 or 16 teams, assign multiple automatic qualifiers per league — as many as four each for themselves — and finalize a scheduling arrangement together that may fetch millions in additional revenue from TV partners, sources told Yahoo Sports.