It’s no surprise that expanding the College Football Playoff from four to 12 teams has led to a lot of complaints.

First, ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips expressed his league’s shock and disappointment after Miami fell from No. 6 to No. 12 and is likely out of contention after losing to Syracuse—without mentioning the fact that they squandered a 21-point lead.

Next was Big 12 Commissioner Brett Yormark, who criticized the committee for ranking Boise State above Arizona State and Iowa State, despite his conference getting just one team in the playoff.

“The committee keeps showing that they’re more concerned with logos than résumés,” he pointed out. (Ignoring the fact that the two Big 12 teams vying for an automatic spot have only one win against a top-25 team.)

Then came an outcry from the SEC. Tennessee’s athletics director, Danny White, seemed unhappy that the Vols might have to play away in the first round. He suggested on a local radio show that a computer ranking system would be better than the selection committee—despite the fact that everyone disliked that the last time it was tried with the BCS.

Following that, Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin, whose team stands at 9-3 and is likely on the playoff bubble, shared his discontent with the system. “It’s a flawed process,” he stated. “Have any of those committee coaches actually been to the deep South, experienced these stadiums, or played in these games? So how do they really know what’s going on?” (One of the committee’s former coaches, Gary Pinkel, certainly had some SEC background from his time at Missouri, but let’s not let facts overshadow a good complaint. Plus, Lane, maybe just win against Kentucky next time.)

As we approach the finalization of the first-ever 12-team playoff field, it’s apparent that dissatisfaction pervades the atmosphere surrounding the system they’ve implemented. To get an idea of what Sunday might look like, consider the uproar that follows every NCAA basketball tournament selection show concerning the last few at-large teams included in the 68-team field.

Except for last year, when Florida State lost its spot to Alabama largely due to an injury to their starting quarterback, there wasn’t much in the way of complaints during the initial ten years of the four-team playoff. Most situations were relatively straightforward, and the No. 5 team often didn’t have valid grievances. However, now that mediocrity is in play, everyone in college athletics feels free to voice their opinions on how unfair and flawed the system is—unless, of course, it benefits them this time.

In this context, SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey deserves recognition for his response to concerns about the playoff format during a Thursday press conference, albeit with some skepticism.

Sankey, still irritated at his fellow conference commissioners for delaying playoff expansion plans after the exit of Texas and Oklahoma to the SEC in 2021, believes that the current issues stem from a rushed shift toward the 2024 season, following a wave of conference realignment that erased the Pac-12 and concentrated power further in the Big Ten and SEC.

“We don’t want constant changes every year,” he said. “We’re working to find solutions. I understand we are now in a new era, which will bring numerous questions. My take is that having lost a year of proper preparation, we’ll have more of these discussions about adjustments.”

He added: “Should we be providing access to these lower-seeded conference champions? That’s a topic we’ve talked about before. It signifies one of the new issues we face.”

Essentially, while Sankey admitted he would prefer to see eight SEC teams in the playoff field, he chose not to prioritize that demand during his news conference. With significant influence, he won’t expend that political capital to argue for a mid-tier SEC team over others competing for that crucial 12th spot.

Looking ahead to when the conference commissioners meet again in coming weeks to discuss the playoff format for 2026 and beyond, it seems the SEC will likely establish boundaries regarding seeding that may put their teams at a disadvantage—they’ve seen how all of this unfolds in real time.

If the committee’s playoff field remained unchanged from this week’s rankings, the SEC would send three teams to the first round, with two required to play away: Tennessee facing Ohio State and Alabama going up against Notre Dame. Meanwhile, favored Texas would enjoy a first-round bye as the No. 2 seed and is set to meet Georgia for a potential third encounter this season in the quarterfinals.

It’s easy to see why that presents an issue.

The original intent behind the 12-team playoff was for the four highest-ranked conference champions to receive first-round byes. On paper, this approach makes sense and keeps conference title games relevant. However, in reality, it results in a bracket that lacks coherence.

Currently, if no changes occur, the No. 5 seed, Penn State, would face No. 4 Boise State in the quarterfinals. The victor of the Tennessee-Ohio State match, both of whom are ranked higher than Boise, would then have to go up against No. 1 Oregon.

I’m reluctant to label this as unfair since college football has been known for its inequities for about fifty years. Nonetheless, it feels incorrect that a No. 5 seed has an easier route to the semifinals than the No. 1 seed, or that a No. 2 seed like Texas faces a significantly harder quarterfinal matchup compared to a No. 4 seed.

In any sport that utilizes a tournament to crown a champion, this is not how it should operate. If Georgia outperforms Arizona State in the regular season and is ranked above them by the committee, it should logically have a clearer path towards the championship. This is a straightforward idea.

Sankey is right that frequently altering the format, as the BCS did almost annually, is not the correct direction for the CFP. Such constant changes only serve to increase frustration and breed skepticism about the process.

The real issue isn’t the involvement of a human committee. In college football, where teams play only 12 games per season (some of which can be mismatches), there isn’t adequate data to feed into a computer algorithm and trust the outcomes. It’s essential to include human judgment in the evaluation process.

The primary problem with the current 12-team playoff format lies in the seeding—not in Kiffin’s concerns or Yormark’s statements. It unfairly rewards certain teams with byes that they do not merit.

The challenge lies in achieving consensus among conference commissioners to rectify this. Cynically speaking, it could be expected that changes will often favor the SEC, while potentially putting leagues like the Big 12 at a disadvantage, especially considering the lower quality of play in their conference this season.

Sankey mentioned he supported the idea of reseeding after the first round, but this was not agreed upon by other commissioners. An alternative solution could be to automatically grant byes to the top two conference champions into the quarterfinals and then rank the remaining teams from Nos. 3-12 according to the committee’s evaluations (with guaranteed slots for the Big 12, ACC, and the Group of Five).

“I believe we will revisit this and likely engage in another round of discussions,” Sankey stated. “I don’t want us to merely react; it’s important for us to carefully consider these issues.”

Will altering the playoff structure to focus on proper seeding benefit the SEC? Most likely, yes. However, this would be preferable to the illogical and chaotic bracket that the committee plans to reveal this Sunday.