The Big Ten and SEC exchanged their schedule politicking during the talking season of summer media days, but they perhaps are more aligned or finding a middle ground.
SEC commissioner Greg Sankey hinted Saturday that he and Big Ten counterpart Tony Petitti are working on a potential college football scheduling alliance that would create a Big Ten vs SEC challenge, or at least it could. Sankey, by no coincidence, attended Wisconsin’s visit to Alabama.
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He highlighted three ways that nonconference schedules could be determined: the schools handle it themselves, the conferences are involved but don’t direct games being scheduled and then the third.
“The third would be conference-established. Tony and I will continue to talk,” Sankey told reporters. “It’s really hard, so I don’t want to overpredict, because I’ve seen conferences make declarations over the last decade, decade and a half of ‘this is what we’re going to do,’ with a conference colleague. It’s a bit more complicated with other commitments, and when games are played.”
The Indiana football scheduling philosophy took center stage in July as Big Ten football media days transpired in Las Vegas. Even first-year Purdue football coach Barry Odom ridiculed the Hoosiers‘ philosophy, which is what SEC at-large hopefuls argued against when they were left out of the 2024 College Football Playoff in favor of IU.
Cignetti, backed by data, was stern on the dais as he quipped that IU would “just adopt the SEC scheduling philosophy.” He was more polite in his response to Odom’s comments, which were made on the radio ahead of that week in Sin City. Pettiti and Big Ten foes came to the defense of Cignetti and IU’s scheduling, too.
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Penn State coach James Franklin, who arrived to lead the Nittany Lions 11 years ago from Vanderbilt even made a “that other conference” reference. Sankey responded with a social media post that read, “greetings from That Other Conference,” with a remade ovular SEC logo that had TOC instead.
The summer was filled with a couple of jabs in which the sting wore off quickly. No knockout punch was going to come because the SEC and Big Ten have a power imbalance in their dominance of college football politics as the other 102 programs in the FBS are combined.
Thus, Sankey’s comments show a positive step forward when factoring in the nonconference scheduling argument. Because the Big Ten, as Cignetti alluded to, played nine league games compared to the SEC’s eight. Petitti and others argued that sandbagging a preseason before playing Big Ten foes was good enough because the data sets were unbalanced, to which the SEC said their league was stronger and many programs playing their regional rivals was better than a nine-game league schedule.
That all could come to a head this winter. The SEC decided it was going to up its conference schedule to nine games. The College Football Playoff format debate can only go on for so much longer with the contract set to expire after this season.
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The consensus across FBS conference commissioners is an expanded 16-team playoff is best suited to be a 5-11 model — five automatic qualifiers, the Power Four conference champs plus best Group of Five, and 11 at-large berths. The Big Ten had gotten creative in recommending it and the SEC swallow half of the 16 bids. It would create a pre-playoff weekend where there are conference championship games, the third- and sixth-place teams and fourth- and fifth-place teams battle for the other two CFP spots. Another idea that popped up would be to expand the event to 24 or 28 teams.
The Big Ten’s quest in CFP restructuring is simple. Petitti said they were open to other formats, “but to be clear: Formats that increase the discretion and role of a CFP selection committee will have a difficult time gaining support from the Big Ten.”
The SEC called his bluff. So, will Petitti and the Big Ten, who have more common ground with their portrayed nemesis than they did in July, agree on a CFP model in which at-large berths are more than the automatic qualifiers? Time is running out on his grandstanding.
Lest we not forget the third party overlording the situation: television networks and the funding they bring to their respective leagues. The 2026 season will have a playoff. There are too many dollars and eyeballs at stake, and neither league will sacrifice that.
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Both of which have proven to be a strong point this season among Big Ten-SEC games in 2025. When Wisconsin hosted Alabama a year ago, they drew 5.03 million viewers on Fox, Medium reported. Could that number grow with a Badgers program struggling to find its footing under third-year coach Luke Fickell and an Alabama team that lost at Florida State casting doubts on the Crimson Tide? Possibly, but that game is on ABC and also kicked off at noon.
Ohio State president Ted Carter pitched the Buckeyes as a big brand, and highlighted that their season opener against Texas which was broadcast on Fox had 16.6 million viewers and peaked at 18.6 million. Carter said it was the most watched season opener, and third most-watched game on Fox. He had his own angle for why that matters:
“I will say that there’s only a couple of schools that really represent the biggest brands in the Big Ten, and you can see that by the TV viewership,” he said. “… So, that’s what happens when you put the Ohio State brand out there.”
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He said Ohio State was “a proud member of the Big Ten” but alluded to wanting a bigger slice of the revenue pie, similar to what the ACC did to better appeal to its big brands, Florida State and Clemson, which once sued it. Carter’s argument centered on the eternal jewels everyone in college football can’t get enough of: money and access.
Osterman: Ohio State wants more money from Big Ten. ‘Equal’ members must listen or be left behind
And that’s the same reward awaiting the Big Ten and SEC over their politicking. The SEC level set on number of conference games, weakening the Big Ten’s CFP model arguments, and potentially opening up scheduling alliances to create more made-for-TV games between the sport’s biggest brands, and they surely will ask to be compensated when their media rights contracts expire in five or more years.
Even in a quest for more money at several levels, college football, often a threat of its own undoing, could create a winning scenario for all: giving everyone access to the playoff, equal resumes for the sport’s premiere leagues, television networks getting the benefits of greater inventory and fans getting marquee meetings between big brands.
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It seems too good to be true, as college football’s leaders have often proven.
Aaron Ferguson is the assistant sports editor at the Indianapolis Star. Follow him on Twitter @Sports_Aaron.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Big Ten SEC college football schedule challenge: College Football Playoff model
