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College Football

Michael Wilbon calls out SEC, B1G for CFP expansion plan: ‘I find it loathsome’

Cory Nightingale

By Cory Nightingale

Published:

Michael Wilbon has been one of the most critical members of the national media when it comes to how the College Football Playoff has been laid out and played in its first season with a 12-team format.

The ESPN analyst and host of the ever-popular Pardon the Interruption was back at it on Wednesday in the aftermath of the latest possible plans to tweak the CFP. During PTI with co-host Tony Kornheiser, they both discussed the idea that would lead to both more overall berths in the Playoff and — get this — more guaranteed spots for SEC and Big Ten teams.

The changes would increase the overall CFP field from 12 to 14 or even 16 and give the SEC and Big Ten, the 2 conferences that already control college football, 4 automatic bids each.

“It leads toward the ruination of what I appreciate about college football,” Wilbon said. “Having followed it all my life — having covered it half my life — I hate what this is doing. And, yes, I’m a trustee of a university in one of those conferences that is at the big-kid table. OK? It’s a golden-child table to be in the Big Ten or the SEC. And I’m grateful for that. But now I’m sure I’m gonna make people who deal with me in the Big Ten cringe.”

Wilbon is a Northwestern guy through and through, but it doesn’t mean he has to be aligned with everything that props up the Big Ten’s status. In this case, he’s dead set against it, and he wasn’t afraid to tell a national TV audience on Wednesday.

” … I find it loathsome,” continued Wilbon. “So, I’m not gonna deal with whether it’s deserved. I don’t know. It just, it distracts, in a major way, from college football to me.”

Cory Nightingale

Cory Nightingale, a former sportswriter and sports editor at the Miami Herald and Palm Beach Post, is a South Florida-based freelance writer who covers Alabama for SaturdayDownSouth.com.

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