"Why would you limit yourself": CFB analyst poses a serious question to SEC and Big Ten Commissioners

On3's College Football analyst, J.D. PicKell, has shared his thoughts on how the Big Ten and the Southeastern Conference can fix the College Football Playoff. The 2024 season marked a new era in college football, with 12 teams competing in the tournament.

The change sparked criticism from fans and coaches, including Lane Kiffin, about how the league decided which teams could contend for a national championship.

On Thursday's episode of "The Hard Count," PicKell mentioned how Big Ten Commissioner Tony Petitti and SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey admitted to watching his videos covering the sport. The analyst hoped they watched the episode and questioned why the Big Ten and SEC agreed to the current playoff structure, which limits their conference's potential bids in the playoffs.

"If you're watching right now, Greg and Tony, hear me out. Why would you limit yourself to the number of bids that you can have? Because understand this now, the SEC and the Big Ten, if they're both taking four spots a piece, the concession is that the Big 12 and the ACC, I would imagine, will try to get, like, what, two bids a piece?" said PicKell (5:15 onwards).

He noted that even if seven Big Ten teams were good enough to make the playoffs, they may not be able to compete in the tournament because of the current system.

"I would much rather we have at large bids for everybody, and we reward teams, not conferences. No auto bids. To me, is the way to keep College Football more of what we grown up on. I get we are going to 14 teams. This is kind of me being idealistic, but that's my own take on this," PicKell said (6:00 onwards).

On3 analyst shares concerns about college football leaning toward comparison to the NFL Playoff

Earlier in the episode, PicKell criticized the College Football Playoff structure. The analyst said he wants the league to avoid comparing it to the NFL playoff by not allowing automatic bids to conference champions for the tournament.

"So if we were to go no auto bids, here's, I think, some of the benefits to that. The reason why the NFL model wouldn't work in College Football is College Football has 56 power four teams. The NFL has 32. A lot of these teams in College Football will not play each other throughout the course of one season, let alone two or three seasons," said PicKell (3:13 onwards).

He also pointed out that NFL teams that play poorly get rewarded by having a chance to get a top player in the NFL draft. Meanwhile, college teams may be unable to recruit five-star players if they don't perform well in the season.

The analyst suggests the league should be more subjective about which teams make it to the College Football Playoff.

"I think that (getting rid of automatic bids) gives us a chance then to still be subjective in College Football, and the reason why that is important if we're going to have a playoff of 14 teams, 16 teams, whatever. Why on earth would we just stick to rewarding strictly conferences? Why would we stick to rewarding records? That doesn't make sense to me," the analyst said.

His comments about avoiding comparisons to the NFL and eliminating automatic bids could sway the two commissioners to consider his opinion. That said, the College Football Playoff doesn't seem likely to change ahead of the 2025 season.