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Stay hydrated with Joe’s free newsletter, SPORTS! Happy Hour. Here’s the link to sign up. This is an opinion column. _____________________ The Big Ten’s war of northern aggression isn’t going so well these days. That’s what happens when most of the teams are trash and the conference is a forgery. The Big Ten is so bad, in fact, that Indiana — historically the worst power conference team in the history of the sport — can rise to the top of the league in two short years thanks to money and a good coach. We call it the war of northern aggression in jest, of course. We got nothing but love for the Big Ten, bless its heart, even after it declared all out hostilities against the SEC this summer. But the College Football Playoff selection committee has a problem on its hands going into Week 12 of the season and the second installment of its dubious rankings. There are too many good teams in the SEC this season and the Big Ten is a fraud. In the SEC, a strong case can be made for six teams to make the playoff. That would be half the field of a 12-team playoff. Now let’s do the Big Ten, which is always scheming behind the scenes. In no way should more than two teams from the Big Ten make the College Football Playoff. Pencil Ohio State and Indiana into the field, and that’s it. Everyone else, including Oregon, can spend the offseason figuring out how to reinvent the Pac-12. Here’s the dirty truth about college football. The Big Ten’s coast-to-coast power play is not working, and it is destroying the sport out West. Now the Big Ten wants to ruin the playoff by expanding the field to 24 teams and giving four auto bids to all the so-called Power conferences. Why? It’s almost like the Big Ten knows that its conference’s depth is an ankle-deep kitty pool for the kids who never learned how to swim. A deadline is approaching for the commissioners of college football. They have to agree to the playoff format for 2026 by Dec.1. The Big Ten is talking expansion in the 11th hour. The SEC isn’t on board. Based on the temperature of both super conferences, it looks like the College Football Playoff is going to remain at 12 teams for at least the 2026 season. It should be 16, but the Big Ten is going to try to win the board room because we know the conference can’t win anything on the field. The Big Ten has won the last two national championships, true, but Michigan cheated and Ohio State will always be Ohio State. The Buckeyes spent enormous amounts of money buying players for its 2024 title run, so congrats to the Buckeyes for raiding the rosters of Alabama and Ole Miss for their best players. Let’s look at this season. We’re a couple weeks away from the finish line. Trends have emerged. There are three really good teams outside of the SEC. They are, in order, Ohio State, Indiana and Texas Tech. The CFP selection committee should put those three teams in the playoff and fill out the rest of the field with the best of the SEC, the ACC champion, Notre Dame and maybe Utah. That means six teams from the SEC should make the 12-team playoff this season, and I could make an argument for seven before the Big Ten gets three. The Big Ten is a mess of mediocrity and gets worse and worse with every week. The SEC, meanwhile, resembles a miniature version of the NFL this season. Auburn, for example, is one of the worst teams in the conference, but the Tigers look just as good as the Oregon Ducks after last week’s set of games. Oregon’s struggle win at Iowa was another pathetic display. The Ducks received a major boost in the polls after defeating Penn State back in September, but the Nittany Lions have literally lost every single game since then and fired their coach. Indiana came from behind against Penn State. Who cares? Penn State is terrible. Who has Indiana even played? It’s one cupcake after another up north. Vanderbilt would destroy the Hoosiers, and no one can convince me otherwise. To his credit, SEC commissioner Greg Sankey saw this coming before the season even started. Sankey and the SEC want to expand the College Football Playoff to 16 teams without any automatic qualifiers beyond the conference champions. That would make it a true competition, the best vs. the best. Notre Dame wants the same. The Big Ten, meanwhile, wants guarantees because the conference’s ultimate plan is to continue raiding the South for top-tier talent. Yes, that’s right. The Big Ten’s war of northern aggression includes outspending the SEC for all of the South’s best players. With four auto bids to the CFP, it makes the Big Ten’s recruiting pitch that much sweeter. Here’s the thing, though. Kids are not stupid. No one wants to sit on a flight from USC to Rutgers or Oregon to Penn State before and after a football game when they can just go to any school in the SEC and enjoy the best atmospheres in college football and easy travel for their families on game day. Strength of schedule matters. It will be a crime against the sport of college football if Vanderbilt quarterback Diego Pavia is left out of the College Football Playoff. Vandy has wins against South Carolina, LSU, Missouri and Auburn. Those are all quality teams. Oregon’s best win is … Iowa? Should the Ducks get in over Oklahoma or Alabama? If Alabama loses to the Sooners on Saturday and then Auburn at Jordan-Hare Stadium (very possible) then Tide might be watching the playoffs from home. The College Football Playoff selection committee already has a tough enough job convincing the public that it’s not just some kind of cheap marketing gimmick to sell ads on TV. One league is making that job harder. It’s the Big Ten, a flimsy con artist masquerading in a muscle suit. MAILBAG SOUND OFF Got a question for Joe? Want to get something off your chest? Send Joe an email about what’s on your mind. Let your voice be heard. Ask him anything for the reader mailbag.
