The B1G & SEC conclude their spring meetings. So, does any of it matter for Rutgers?

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The SEC & B1G held their spring meetings, attended by ADs, coaches, and other mucketymucks from member schools. And right out of the box, from the ESPN article about it, there was a comment that I felt hit right at Rutgers:
Washington coach Jedd Fisch said he would like to see the Big Ten play a nine-game league schedule plus a nonconference game against one team each from the SEC, the ACC and the Big 12.

Hmm, no more Norfolk State. No more UMASS, or Howard, or Akron. Those easy(er) non-conference games gone in favor of more “competitive” contests against Syracuse, UVa, South Carolina, Florida, Baylor, or Colorado.

Let me rethink that use of “competitive”.

Fisch’s thought process is simple. If you’re playing other P4 teams, then you have a metric to compare when you’re ranking schools for the playoff.

Impact on Rutgers? Right now, I’d say zilch. Nada. Zippo. And that’s an unfortunate problem. Although three years ago, Indiana fans would have said the same thing.

Per that article, here are some key takeaways.

16- or 24-team CFP

The Big Ten and its commissioner Tony Petiti want 24 teams. The SEC’s Greg Sankey and his group are not convinced….just yet. Petiti said that the B1G has “had zero conversations about 16”. And it appeared to be a unanimous front, at least publicly. Down south, there were some folks at least thinking about it and asking questions.

Tennessee athletic director Danny White was one of the few SEC leaders who publicly supported the Big Ten’s 24-team field, but multiple coaches used the phrase “self-preservation” when talking about the increased job security a larger field would provide.

Self-preservation, as in if there are more teams, there are more opportunities to avoid getting fired. More on that below regarding the value of the regular season.

TV partners

This season is the first of a six year deal with ESPN – as long as it’s a 12- or 14-team field. If it grew, ESPN has first dibs to offer more money. As for the Big Ten, Tony Petitti said his preference for a media partner in a 24-team CFP is “whoever’s committed to making it work.” Or, as I would say, who wants to give us the most money.

SEC “breakaway”

Would the SEC ever consider breaking away from the rest of the P4? If you thought your brand was worth gazillions of dollars more than you’re making now, wouldn’t you?

Georgia’s Kirby Smart said he wasn’t afraid to break away. Just as his university president, Jere Morehead, told On3 last week. The word anarchy keeps getting tossed around – I can’t disagree – as college sports more and more becomes the wild west. Many college administrators and coaches are looking for federal legislation to curtail that anarchy. The Georgia prez says he’s prepared to “be ready to vote on creating an SEC mechanism and SEC rules.”

On the Banks is going to look at this “breakaway” in more detail in another post.

Conference title games

The more games played in a playoff, the more questions are raised about the length and significance of the regular season. But, the money…..

Per the article: Sources said the SEC title game brings in $80-100 million in total revenue — a windfall [Kirby] Smart said he is afraid to lose.

Smart had some thoughts:

“I don’t think it’s great for the transfer portal to be ending the season that late, and if that championship game is in the way of that, or gets put on the back burner because of that, I think you’d have to accept it,” Smart said. “But I’m really more worried about the financial burden that we’re under right now of paying for all of the athletic department. [my bold] Even in the SEC and at Georgia, there are concerns about money to support the less revenue-generating sports.

Rutgers depends – a lot – on conference revenue distribution. It isn’t completely clear how much the Big Ten title game generates, but it certainly helps every team’s bottom line. But….

“The championship game should not hold this up,” Penn State athletic director Pat Kraft said. “It should not hold progress up.” Easy for Kraft to say as PSU football already supports just about everything else on campus.

Tennessee’s AD Danny White, though, had an interesting take on finances, one that I think is pertinent to Rutgers.

“I’ve always been a proponent, and I do this on our campus, build the product right, and the revenue comes next,” he said. “So I’ve got full faith in our commissioner and three other commissioners that are all involved in that conversation.”

Build it right. Has Rutgers ever really done that? There have been a few moments, but I always felt Rutgers did things on the cheap or half way. I have more faith that Zinn and Tate won’t take that approach.

Regular season value

Play more games in a playoff and the regular season becomes meaningless, maybe moreso for the also-rans and have-nots. That’s one point of view.

But then there’s also Kirby Smart’s comment about self-preservation.

Part of the Big Ten’s reasoning behind the larger field was to address the unprecedented coaching carousel that took place last year when Penn State’s James Franklin and LSU’s Brian Kelly were fired seemingly for an inability to play for the national title.

Texas A&M coach Mike Elko echoed Smart’s sentiments, joking that he wanted “40 [teams], because then I’ll make it and then I won’t get fired.”

But not everyone is on board with that attitude. Elko’s own AD feels protecting the regular season is very important. “I do think college football is a little bit different,” [Trev] Alberts said. “I think the regular season really has to matter. I think it should be hard to get in the playoff. … I think you have to truly understand access is important. What’s good for the enterprise?“

There are, though, some Big Ten folks with backgrounds in the pros, the NFL in particular, who don’t feel expanding the playoffs is a negative thing for the regular season. The AD at Maryland, Jim Smith, was in Atlanta with the Falcons (and the Braves) and said, “….people were really concerned it was going to water down both playoffs and the regular season, and the exact opposite happened. Every game became more compelling. So, I believe that games will be more compelling at the end of the season, and it will lead to a really interesting playoff”.

Washington’s Jedd Fisch was the quarterbacks coach with the Patriots and an assistant with the Rams, and worked with several other NFL teams. He thinks the regular season won’t be impacted.

“It’s not irrelevant in the NFL….We’re just seeing the way college football was X amount of years ago where the regular season was really a 12-game playoff. Every week you were eliminating yourself or not eliminating yourself if you lost a game versus understanding there’s so many things that go into a game and you can lose a game.”

CFP Selection Committee

In every post-season selection, somebody always feels that they were screwed, cheated, ignored. There are certainly those who feel that only the best teams – not the best from every FBS conference – should get in, thus excluding the JMUs, Tulanes, and Boise States. But even within the P4, there can be a sense that not everyone is treated the same.

First-year Oklahoma athletic director Roger Denny said he’s hesitant to schedule more tough nonconference games until he trusts the committee will reward it in the selection process.

“The CFP and that group are working really hard to make sure they can build that trust, but that’s got to be part of it,” he said.

Georgia athletic director Josh Brooks said the decision to go to a nine-game SEC schedule needs to “show up immediately” in the committee’s metrics.

“If you’re playing nine conference games in what is statistically the hardest conference, then the real debate, it’s all going to come down to the 9-3 versus the 10-2,” Brooks said. “We all see it coming.”

In some ways, the ADs in the P4, and in this case the Big Ten and SEC, don’t necessarily trust the process with the CFP as it currently stands. Everybody might be able to agree – within a place or so – who the top three, four, maybe eight teams are. But, after that?

“Sometimes at the top it’s an easier discussion, and so it’s quicker,” said [Michigan’s AD Warde] Manuel, who served on the committee from 2022 to 2024 and chaired the group in 2024. “At the back end, it’s a longer discussion because you have more you’re dealing with — who they’re playing, how’d they play in the nonconference, you really have to home in on those teams because you might be dealing with two three-loss teams, four-loss teams. What’s the data? What did we see on the film? In my three years there, we were always very thorough all the way to the end. Being in the top 25 is really important to a lot of teams. You can’t blow it off at the end because it’s 24 and 25. You really have to work through it.”

The Rutgers Connection

Truthfully, if the topics of conversation focused primarily on the College Football Playoff, then much of the discussion didn’t really impact the Knights at all. A nine- vs eight-game conference schedule? Sure. But until RU gets its act together, talking about the number of teams in the CFP will be just a sidebar conversation for us.

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