This 12-team College Football Playoff will be living on borrowed time if 10-win teams from Big Ten, SEC start getting rejected.
USC upsetting Oregon would start to overcrowd the playoff bubble.
Lincoln Riley once burned bridges. Can he now burn down a playoff?
Lincoln Riley could burn it all down. Southern California’s coach could take a blow torch to the 12-team College Football Playoff by injecting a virus called chaos and a bacterium called overcrowding into the selection process.
If No. 15 USC (8-2) upsets No. 5 Oregon (9-1) this weekend and rams its way into the playoff picture, well, I’m afraid the bracket is not going to be big enough to accommodate all the Big Ten and SEC teams that finish with at least 10 victories.
And if USC finished 10-2 and got rejected from the playoff, well, that might be the end of the 12-team playoff as we know it. Killed off by USC’s renegade coach who’s starting to find his stride in the Big Ten, even as he complains about the travel schedule.
All of a sudden, the SEC-backed 5+11 playoff expansion model will start looking pretty good in Big Ten land once the playoff bubble overloads, and 10-2 teams start getting rejected.
Ten wins by a Big Ten or an SEC team is supposed to get you in the bracket. No rule guarantees that, but that’s the prevailing logic.
As soon as a 10-win team of USC’s magnitude gets rejected, a 12-team format becomes unsustainable for the Big Ten.
Or, perhaps, USC would get the playoff bid and 10-2 Oregon would be rejected.
Same difference, though, of a development that would demand Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti strike a deal with his SEC counterpart, Greg Sankey, to expand the playoff to 16 teams.
And, oh my goodness, could you imagine if Michigan beats Ohio State and also finishes 10-2? That would unlock the possibility of five Big Ten teams and six SEC teams finishing with at least 10 wins apiece.
You know what that crammed bubble would add up to? Five SEC qualifiers (apologies to Vanderbilt), one from the Big 12, one from the ACC, Notre Dame, and, sorry about your luck Big Ten, but two of your 10-2 teams would get stiffed.
That’s how you reach the swift death of this 12-team format that guarantees three spots for teams from outside of the Big Ten and SEC.
Crowded CFP bubble could rekindle 16-team playoff talks
Playoff expansion talks stalled several months ago after the Big Ten and SEC retreated to their corners with differing ideas for how to grow the field to 16.
The SEC prefers models with more at-large bids. The 5+11 model would preserve five automatic bids for conference champions, alongside 11 at-large bids.
The Big Ten favors a 16-team playoff that incorporates play-in games, pre-assigns multiple auto bids to each Power Four conference and reduces the role of the selection committee.
Neither league has budged in its stance. Playoff expansion cannot occur unless those two power brokers reach agreement.
In the interim, the existing 12-team structure works fine — until it doesn’t.
A 10-win Big Ten team getting rejected becomes the point this playoff becomes untenable. Petitti must then kill his darlings of play-in games and multiple auto bids to achieve a bigger bracket, even if it’s on the SEC’s terms, because 10-2 USC or 10-2 Oregon getting rejected isn’t the SEC’s problem.
Lincoln Riley, USC could inject chaos by beating Oregon
The Bowl Championship Series shortcomings got exposed when undefeated Auburn got left out of the national championship. The four-team playoff couldn’t be suffocated quickly enough after 13-0 Florida State got snubbed.
The omission of a 10-2 super-conference team wouldn’t be a travesty of that magnitude. I’d lose no sleep over the rejection of a 10-2 USC team that lost to Illinois and Notre Dame, or the omission or an Oregon team that lacks signature wins and, if it loses to USC, will have two home losses. But, do you think USC or Oregon would see it that way?
If you’re the president of a 10-2 Big Ten school competing in an also-ran bowl and not the CFP, you’re demanding solutions from your conference commissioner. Heretofore, Petitti’s been the holdout preventing a 5+11 model for the 2026 season and beyond, a model that would be big enough to accommodate all of these two-loss teams from the Big Ten and SEC.
We’re one USC win away from the 12-team playoff living on borrowed time, one win away from Riley going from the guy who burned bridges at Oklahoma to the coach who burned down a playoff.
Blake Toppmeyer is the USA TODAY Network’s senior national college football columnist. Email him at BToppmeyer@gannett.com and follow him on X @btoppmeyer.