Every once in a while, someone perfectly sums up a situation with one sentence—and this week, that someone was Stewart Mandel.
Taking to social media with all the sarcasm college football fans could ask for, Mandel mocked the SEC’s push for a lopsided College Football Playoff format with a brutally funny NBA analogy:
“Fearing an Indiana-OKC Finals, the NBA is considering a plan where the Lakers and Celtics would get twice as many entries in the Playoffs going forward.
And a double bye.
And twice as much of the postseason revenue.”
Imagine If Any Other League Tried This
Let’s step back and look at what the SEC (with the Big Ten riding shotgun) is actually proposing for the future of the College Football Playoff: four automatic bids each for their two conferences. The ACC and Big 12? Only two each. Add in one spot for the top Group of Five champ and three at-large bids, and suddenly we’re looking at a 16-team bracket where half the field is pre-loaded with teams from just two conferences—before anyone even plays a down.
Now plug that logic into any other sport, and you realize how absurd it is.
Mandel’s NBA analogy paints the picture perfectly. Imagine if the Lakers and Celtics got guaranteed playoff spots, a double bye, and a bigger cut of postseason revenue just because they’ve historically been good and bring in more eyeballs. People would be furious. The integrity of the league would be called into question overnight.
But in college football? Greg Sankey says it with a straight face and expects everyone to nod along — and SEC fans think it's just fine.
Oh, and don't bring up that "SEC schedule" garbage as a reason to justify this. There were plenty of years where the Western Conference was clearly better from top-to-bottom than the Eastern Conference in the NBA. Did that provoke the Lakers, Spurs, and Suns to demand unequal playoff position for eternity? No. It's a cop-out.
Frankly, if you're good enough to win the national championship, then win the games in front of you. If you can't do that, then you've got no one to blame but yourself.
This Isn’t About Competition
The SEC and Big Ten aren’t doing this because they think it's fair or right. They’re doing it because they can. It’s about stacking the deck in their favor, securing more national exposure, and grabbing a bigger piece of the playoff money pie—while pretending it’s all part of “moving the game forward.”
And the wildest part? They’re not even pretending it’s a fair system. The proposal practically screams, “We think we’re better than you, and we want the structure to reflect that.” After all, the SEC is undefeated in hypothetical games.
Fans aren’t dumb. They see what’s happening. And when respected voices like Stewart Mandel start openly clowning the idea, it gives everyone else permission to say what they’re already thinking:
This format is ridiculous.
It turns the playoff from a path to earn your way in into a VIP club with reserved seating for the richest members. And no matter how you slice it, that’s not what sports are supposed to be about.