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The original was posted on /r/cfb by /u/drjjoyner on 2025-07-05 12:49:57+00:00.
Likely paywalled and, alas, no way to provide a gift link. The argument, by Seth Emerson and Scott Dochterman, is that the SEC is much more media-friendly than the Big Ten, which results in dominating the public narrative.
Key 'graphs:
This year, as the debate raged over the future of the College Football Playoff, the result was a lot of thinking out loud. Head coaches and athletic directors mused about different options. Commissioner Greg Sankey held a daily news conference, and at his final one, media members were handed an eight-page argument for why the SEC was the toughest football conference.
Whether you liked the SEC’s message or not, it got out.
Meanwhile, the other major conference was silent. The Big Ten quietly held its meetings the week before in Los Angeles, purposefully keeping the media at arm’s length. Commissioner Tony Petitti, privately pushing for an automatic-bid CFP format, went months without publicly advocating for it. He finally relented on June 30, speaking on a podcast with Joel Klatt, a Fox Sports analyst who calls Big Ten games.
[…]
That was the SEC emerging as the key decision-maker, while the Big Ten publicly abdicated its preferred format of four automatic bids for itself and the SEC. And in the void left by the Big Ten, the ACC and Big 12pushed for their preferred format (five conference champions plus 11 at-larges), with the SEC using its week-long platform to talk about schedule strength.
There’s a whole lot more, including how the two leagues use their media days, public lobbing of the Playoff committee, and the historical reasons for the competing media approaches.