The College Football Playoff is stuck, fractured, and increasingly messy, and the Big 12 is both a beneficiary and a casualty of the chaos. Thanks to a little-noticed memorandum of understanding signed in 2024, the conference helped block the Big Ten’s power grab, but also locked itself into a smaller financial future.
College athletic directors, university presidents and conference commissioners tend to be pretty smart folks. But the past couple of months have been a bad look for the entire group when it comes to the College Football Playoff.
What’s going on in the Big 12 and beyond? I expand and explain every Sunday in Postscripts at Heartland College Sports, your home for independent Big 12 coverage.
Recent CFP Negotiation History
Let’s go back to December. Remember when Notre Dame didn’t make the CFP and athletic director Pete Bevacqua was really not having it? Well, during that time it was reported that as long as the Fighting Irish finished in the Top 12 of the CFP rankings in 2026 they would make the playoff. Then USC was like, “What?! That’s not fair?!” and we lost the USC-Notre Dame game for the foreseeable future?
Turns out, that was in the memorandum of understanding signed in 2024 by every conference and Notre Dame almost two years ago that replaced the CFP contract that ended in 2025. In other words, you would have had to have failed to read the MOU to not know that. About that …
Earlier this week The Athletic’s Chris Vannini reported that the Group of 6 berth criteria has changed too. Now, instead of it going to the highest-ranked conference champion, it will simply go to the highest ranked Group of 6 teams. It’s a subtle change, but a change. As Vannini reported:
Multiple G6 leaders told The Athletic this week they didn’t realize the memo had no conference champion stipulation until recently.
Again, it’s in the MOU. Everyone signed it. Theoretically they read stuff before they sign it right?
Well, let me clue into one more thing that was reported this week. At some point, you’ll probably hear a Big 12 AD or president complain about it. But, it’s in the MOU.
CFP Payouts in 2026
In 2026 the payouts to conferences will look much different. This year it was incentive-based. The more you win the more your league gets. Miami got to keep all its money because the ACC has gone to unequal revenue sharing (let me know how that works out, by the way). But, in 2026 the incentives are gone and conferences will be paid a flat rate. But it’s not equal as it was in the four-team CFP contract, as Vannini wrote:
Now, multiple sources briefed on the revenue model at the time confirmed the new breakdown to be roughly 29 percent annually for both the Big Ten and SEC (more than $21 million per school), 17 percent for the ACC (around $13 million each), 15 percent for the Big 12 ($12 million each) and 9 percent for the Group of 6 conferences collectively (around $1.8 million per school).
Why is the Big 12 getting less than the other power conferences? Well, remember a few weeks ago when I wrote about the Big 12’s shortcomings in the playoffs? Well, that’s why. The percentages were based on previous CFP appearances. The Big 12 painted itself into this corner.
Again, it’s in the MOU. Every Big 12 AD, president and commissioner Brett Yormark should know that.
It’s the same MOU that gave the Big Ten and the SEC outsized power over the CFP’s future format, which is now stuck at 12 because — guess what — the Big Ten and the SEC can’t agree on the format. Brilliant.
Big Ten vs. SEC for CFP Future
The Big Ten wants 24 teams and multiple auto bids for its league. The SEC wants the 16-team format with five auto bids and 11 at-large bids. The latter is the same format Yormark and ACC commissioner Jim Phillips want. As long as SEC commissioner Greg Sankey remains aligned with the pair, then the Big Ten and the SEC are at odds. This has to be weird for Sankey. He usually wins these scenarios. But with three straight national champs coming out of the Big Ten, and the fact that the Big Ten and the SEC have to agree on the format, commissioner Tony Petitti has leverage.
Buy, this also exposed a fundamental lack of flow-charting the possible outcomes of this MOU. It seems that EVERYONE thought the playoff was going to expand to 16 teams for 2026 and either no one cared to read the fine print or everyone though there would be a chance to amend the deal.
Now? We have a 12-team playoff, which I’m fine with. But, we also have a lot of unnecessary revisionist history from the game’s leadership that just makes the last year of debating a 16-team or 24-team playoff seem like a complete waste of time.
It makes the Big 12 a winner AND a loser in this. The Big 12 didn’t want the Big Ten to get its way and it didn’t. It wanted the SEC to remain aligned to what it wants, and it is. But the Big 12’s CFP paycheck goes down as a result.
But at least we know who can comprehend an MOU and who can’t. So, upside.
