SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey is already putting the College Football Playoff committee on notice.
With the league moving to a nine-game conference schedule, Sankey said the committee needs to account for what that change actually means for SEC teams trying to build a postseason résumé.
“The issue we are going to have is accumulating losses because you are not playing mid-level FBS teams,” Sankey said. “The selection committee has to respect the difference, in my view.
Will it? I don’t know.
That will drive our decision-making.”
Sankey’s point is straightforward: when SEC teams trade a nonconference game for another league matchup, they’re taking on more chances to lose. That matters in a 12-team Playoff format, where every blemish gets magnified and every résumé debate turns into a microscope.
The frustration around the schedule change has already been bubbling inside the league. Earlier this offseason, SEC coaches voiced their displeasure with the move to nine conference games, even though their schools had voted for it.
Their annoyance came from the belief that a bigger College Football Playoff was coming soon. Instead, the Playoff is still set at 12 teams for the 2026 season.
That’s the tension Sankey is talking about. SEC teams are now being asked to survive a tougher weekly grind, but they still have to live inside a selection process that could treat all losses the same.
Missouri offers a clean example. Eli Drinkwitz said Monday that he supports Playoff expansion but doesn’t like the idea of committees, and the schedule debate is a big reason why. The Tigers are lined up to play Texas, Oklahoma, Georgia, Ole Miss and Texas A&M, along with four other SEC games.
No one knows yet which SEC teams will live up to the hype this year, but those five opponents all look like major hurdles on paper. Swap one of them out for Missouri State, and Missouri’s path suddenly looks a whole lot softer.
That’s the bigger argument Sankey is trying to make. If Texas turns out to be as strong as many expect, then why should Missouri be judged under the same lens as a team like BYU, whose toughest games are Notre Dame at home and Utah, 20 miles down the road?
The comparison only gets sharper from there. Missouri could end up facing five opponents tougher than BYU’s toughest game, and the same logic could apply to plenty of Big 12 and ACC programs.
How the CFP committee handles strength of schedule in that kind of setup will be one of the season’s biggest debates. And as the losses pile up, Sankey is making sure the committee hears about it now.
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