Takeaways from college football realignment, plus predicting what’s next

What’s next for the SEC, and the rest of college football?

So far the SEC has been pretty quiet in college fooball conference realignment and you wonder how long that will be the case.

Florida State is openly talking about leaving the ACC and why would the Seminoles want to stay the terrible media rights deal the conference is stuck with?

Florida and South Carolina might not like it, but adding Florida State, Clemson, Miami, and North Carolina would make a ton of sense. Maybe even adding Duke, Virginia Tech, Virginia, and Pittsburgh would follow as the SEC could build a dynamic football/basketball league.

The arms race in college football conference realignment is between the Big Ten and the SEC. There’s no question about it. There’s going to be a Big Two and a Group of however many conferences are left.

There will be the Big 12, maybe a new Pac-12 (leftovers plus Mountain West) and maybe there will be a merger of sorts between the Sun Belt, Conference USA, and American leagues at some point.

Three or four 24-team conferences is probably where things are headed. Or maybe we are headed for a Premier League of college football with 30-40 teams.

Either way, I’d be stunned if the Big Ten/SEC didn’t add more teams in the next year. As we have seen this all happens quickly and as we learned with the Pac-12, waiting too long can have very real consequences.

I’d also expect a change in the new playoff format. Not the number of 12, but the number of automatic bids. It could shrink by one or two once this is all said and done to open up more at-large berths for the two super college football conferences — the Big Ten and SEC.