COLLEGE FOOTBALL: JAN 20 CFP National Championship - Notre Dame vs Ohio State
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The clock is ticking on College Football Playoff decision-makers as they discuss potential expansion for the 2026 postseason, and with a Dec. 1 deadline quickly approaching, the stakeholders may not reach an agreement to restructure the bracket. Mississippi State president Mark Keenum said Friday that he is "not real optimistic" the conference commissioners will agree upon an expansion plan.

Among the primary holdups in CFP expansion talks is the lack of a consensus on how many automatic bids should be included in a larger field. While the Big Ten has long been a proponent of dishing out numerous guaranteed spots -- with most going to Big Ten and SEC teams -- other conferences have been wary of the idea. In fact, Keenum said that the SEC would prefer to do away with automatic bids altogether.

"I'm not a big fan of automatic qualifiers," Keenum said on "The Paul Finebaum Show." "I think the best teams ought to play in our nation's national tournament to determine who our national champion in college football is going to be, and not have automatic bids. That's the position of the Southeastern Conference presidents, chancellors, our commissioner and probably most of the conferences that are part of CFP."

The Big Ten and SEC hold the most power in constructing future playoff models, and it is in their best interests to adopt formats that reward as many spots as possible to their member schools. They have conflicting opinions, though, on how to achieve that goal.

On one hand, the Big Ten seeks to guarantee a base number of bids by conference and backfill the bracket with at-large selections. On the other hand, the SEC appears willing to eliminate a guaranteed floor and instead swing for the fences, thus potentially sending more teams to the postseason with at-large bids than it would with a predetermined number of automatic berths.

Specifically, the Big Ten favors a 16-team playoff with four automatic qualifiers reserved for each of the two most powerful conferences while SEC commissioner Greg Sankey said his league is open to various expansion formats including 5+7, 5+9 or 5+11 models -- all of which cap guaranteed spots to one per conference. Sankey also made clear that his personal preference is to remove automatic bids altogether.

"We're still negotiating," Keenum said. "We have to make a decision before the end of this month if we're going to expand to 16 next year. We've got just a few more weeks. I'll be honest, I'm not real optimistic that we'll get to that, but we'll keep working on it."

If the commissioners cannot reach an agreement by Dec. 1 on how a 16-team bracket would be structured, the CFP will remain in its present state for 2026. This season is the second of the 12-team era and the first with a straight-seeding model, which awards first-round byes to the four highest-ranked teams regardless of conference championship status.