Big Ten and SEC are taking the next step toward control of college football

All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.

One of the rewritten commandments in George Orwell's novel Animal farm.

If college football has gone to the pigs, then there are currently two Napoleons in the sport, Greg Sankey and Tony Petitti. The commissioners of the Southeastern Conference and Big Ten, respectively, appear to be working strategically toward the kind of totalitarian takeover that took place in Orwell's 1945 work. The next step could come next week, when their leagues discuss decisions that will affect the entire sport, but are likely will be taken in their own best interests.

Animal farm was an allegorical satire about Joseph Stalin who turned the zeitgeist of the 1917 Russian Revolution into a ruthless power grab as ruler of the Soviet Union. The pigs lead an overthrow of the humans and then discover that they enjoy being in charge. They turn their utopian farm, built on the credo All Animals Are Equal, into a new version of corrupt authority. The commandments of the farm are rewritten, with Napoleon as the authoritarian leader of a ruling pig class.

Here in the college athletics world, NCAA rule (the Romanov dynasty, if you will) has largely been overthrown and replaced by conference autonomy. And within that revolutionary leadership cabal, the SEC and the Big Ten are consolidating their power at the expense of everyone else. It started with realignment attacks on the Big 12 and Pac-12, leading to major revenue disparities, and it hasn't stopped there.

According to multiple media reports, there will be a meeting in Nashville on October 10 for administrators from both leagues. This is happening under the guise of a Big Ten-SEC advisory group that was formed last February and immediately raised the hairs on the backs of everyone outside of these leagues. The convergence of top predators tends not to go well for those further down the food chain.

The announcement was couched in light-hearted, non-threatening language about the challenges facing college sports: These challenges, including but not limited to recent court decisions, pending lawsuits, a patchwork of state laws and complex governance proposals, are forcing the two conferences to take a leadership role in developing solutions for a sustainable future of college sports.

Yes, they will discuss it House vs. NCAA legal settlement during this meeting. Probably some other problems. They will also get serious about wresting more control of college football away from the rest of the FBS.

Among the non-challenging topics that will be discussed: future scheduling agreements between the Big Ten and SEC and their preference for automatic bids in the next iteration of the College Football Playoff, according to ESPN.

What's at stake: The SEC and Big Ten are going to further manipulate the playoffs in their favor when they already have all the advantages. They don't need to manipulate the system further, but they are willing to do so. And they have already been given the power to make decisions for everyone.

To quickly recap, we have an agreed-upon format for a 12-team playoff for this season and next, but nothing else is locked into a contract with ESPN that runs from 2026 through 32. Currently, there are automatic bids for five players. conference champions and seven at-large bids, with the virtual certainty that four of those automatic spots will go to the champions of the SEC, Big Ten, Atlantic Coast Conference and the Big 12. The fifth automatic bid goes to the highest-ranked champion of the Group of 5 conferences.

The Big Ten and SEC already tested their power grabs in the playoffs last February. Among the ideas proposed: expansion to 14 teams, with automatic top two seedings for their conferences; at least three guaranteed playoff bids for the Big Ten and SEC, with two each for the ACC and Big 12; and Petitti himself insisted on it four automatic bids for his league and the SEC.

It was a blatantly unpleasant proposition. Two leagues are afraid to compete despite already having major advantages across the board. That storm remained underground for a while, but in March two major decisions were made by the College Football Playoff Management Committee, which consists of the commissioners from each conference plus Notre Dame athletic director Pete Bevacqua:

The second of these two developments probably did not receive the attention it deserved at the time. It could come home to sleep now.

Why would the rest of the leagues agree to such a strong move? Because they clearly perceived a threat that the Big Ten and the SEC could break away completely, eliminating the sport as a national entity once and for all.

So control was relinquished. And now those two leagues will decide what's best for everyone, what's best for themselves.

No one believes more strongly than Comrade Napoleon that all animals are equal. He would be more than happy to let you make your own decisions. But sometimes you may make the wrong decisions, comrades, and then where should we go?

Squealer, Napoleon's propagandist Animal farm.

This meeting in Nashville sounds like the next phase of the takeover. The Big Ten and SEC can further shape the playoff as they believe three automatic bids for each league seems a plausible starting point, perhaps with two apiece for the Big 12 and ACC. And they can also think of ways to further influence the selection process in their favor.

There have been complaints about the subjectivity of the CFP selection committee. Hey, they're people, there's going to be subjectivity. It hasn't been perfect, but it hasn't been a catastrophe either. And it won't be in a 12-team playoff, with less pressure on each roster.

But in an era of bigger conferences and almost certainly more losses to top teams, the leagues have done something to themselves in the way the Big Ten and SEC want the strength of schedule to matter more. And they don't seem to trust a broadly representative human panel to distinguish between winning percentage and playing stronger teams. So why not bypass the people who advocate playing the schedule system?

This is where an agreement between the two conferences to play more with each other could come in handy. If the Big Ten and SEC play non-conference games against each other, it will benefit their strong schedule and potentially hurt the other leagues that no longer get games against those two. Voila, they've baked in an SOS advantage at the expense of everyone else.

Then you feed the numbers into a bunch of computers that spit out the majority of the bids for the SEC and Big Ten, and the two commissioners can shrug their shoulders and say, this is what the computers produced. Objectivity rules.

The most ridiculous aspect of all this is that the SEC and Big Ten don't have to legislate an advantage in the playoff format. They will bring in the most teams almost every year. There may be rare occasions when the ACC or Big 12 are each worth three or more bids, but if the current selection process holds, the Big Ten and SEC will regularly receive seven or more bids.

The fact that they don't trust themselves or the system enough to make things fairer is a telling commentary on the drive for control. Don't earn it on the field, write it in the rules.

And so the stranglehold threatens to become even tighter.

The Big Ten and the SEC seem to be operating under the theory that the best way to usurp power is to do it gradually, taking a little here and a little there, so as not to cause alarm. By the time they take full control, it's too late for their competitors to do anything about it.

In Animal farm, the pigs took the milk and apples for themselves while telling the crowd a lie. Squealer put it this way:

I hope you can't imagine that we pigs do this in a spirit of selfishness and privilege? Many of us actually don't like milk and apples. Milk and apples (this has been proven by science, comrades) contain substances that are absolutely necessary for the well-being of a pig. We pigs are brain workers. The entire management and organization of this farm depends on us. We watch over your well-being day and night. It is for your good that we drink that milk and eat those apples.

Fill the conference tables with milk and apples in Nashville next week. The Big Ten and SEC are about to get fatter.