Before we go any further: No, the Power 4 are never going to "kick out" the Group of 6 from the College Football Playoff. The current format enshrines at least one spot for the Group of 6 by reserving automatic bids for the five highest-rated conference champions, and two got in last fall after the ACC crowned the wrong team as its champion. Having read the room that no one wants his cockamamie format where automatic bids are pre-determined by conference affiliation, Big Ten commissioner Tony Pettiti has pivoted his pitch for 24 teams with only one auto bid... for the highest-ranked G6 champion. (Personally, I would find that extremely condescending were I a G6 commissioner and vote against it out of spite. Probably why I'm not a conference commissioner.)
And so no, the Power 4 will never pull up the drawbridge and close the gates to the Group of 6 in any formal way that could get them sued, but the idea of the Group of 6 starting their own playoff is a perpetual topic in college football.
The G6 are 10-12 in BCS/New Year's Six/College Football Playoff games, dating back to the 2004 season when an undefeated Utah -- coached by Urban Meyer, and quarterbacked by No. 1 pick Alex Smith -- hammered Big East champion Pitt in the Fiesta Bowl. That's an admirable record given that the G6/non-AQs were likely double-digit underdogs in probably 18 of the 22 games, but it comes with a few caveats:
1) After going 9-4 from undefeated Utah's 2004 win through undefeated UCF's win over SEC West champion Auburn in 2017, the Group of 6 is 1-8 in its last nine games.
2) Following that point, most of the best programs have been drafted upwards: Utah (two wins), UCF (two wins), Houston (one) and TCU (one) are all in the Big 12 today, along with 2-time American champ Cincinnati. Boise State leads the Group of 6 with three wins (one coming against TCU in the 2009 Fiesta Bowl); the only other current Group of 6 program to win a BCS/NY6/CFP game is Tulane, who beat USC in the 2022 Cotton Bowl.
3) In actual College Football Playoff games, the Group of 6 is 0-4 and has been out-scored 150-64. That includes Cincinnati, who lost 27-6 to Alabama in the 2021 season.
Relatedly, the American, MAC, Mountain West, Pac-12, Sun Belt and Conference USA combined for just 14 of the 257 players taken in last week's NFL Draft, less than half of the Big 12 and ACC's respective totals and one-sixth of the SEC's record 87. The programs in those conferences are as good as ever at identifying and developing future NFL players, they just can't keep them.
None of the changes to college football over the past decade-plus have been kind to the Group of 6, and so many argue that now is the time for a formal separation between the so-called haves and have-nots. Now, most of those people making this argument are not fans of G6 programs and likely do not even watch it all, and so it's hard to take these people seriously.
However, one important voice is pitching a G6 playoff, with a twist. The G6 would still send its highest-ranked team to the CFP, but the best of the rest would compete in a G6 playoff.
That's the plan of American commissioner Tim Pernetti, a former Rutgers tight end who worked at ABC and the predecessor to CBS Sports Network prior to becoming his alma mater's athletics director. In the Pernetti Plan, the five G6 champions not selected for the CFP would compete for their own championship (and presumably the runner-up to the champ that made the CFP, no doubt the American champ in Pernetti's mind). This would allow the Group of 6 to have its cake and eat it too. Pernetti even pitched a schedule, with the semifinals on the Tuesday and Wednesday before the CFP semifinals in the second week in January.
"There is demand for more postseason football," Pernetti told the Big Mountain Podcast earlier this week. "You have five conference champions that are not going to the Playoff. How do we create a new enterprise that compliments the CFP? Maybe we play on Tuesday and Wednesday leading into Thursday. There's a gap there where from Sunday NFL, Monday Night Football, Group of 6 playoff, Group of 6 playoff, CFP, CFP, back to the NFL. You could create the greatest gauntlet for a football fan ever seen in life by doing something like that."
The Type A part of my brain can't process a playoff in which, by definition, the best team does not participate. What do the fans of the G6 tournament champion chant? We're number 2!?
That bit of incongruence aside, this version of a G6 playoff would likely be successful. In 2025, MAC champion Western Michigan played C-USA champ Kennesaw State in the Myrtle Beach Bowl... at 11 a.m. on a pre-Christmas Monday. Less than a million people watched, and fewer than 10,000 attended. Put that same product in the exact same box but surround it with shinier wrapping paper and a fancier bow, and there's no doubt the football-watching public would be more excited to open it. Elsewhere, Mountain West champ Boise State played the Big Ten's eighth-place team in a game so early in the bowl season schedule that it went head-to-head with the Heisman Trophy ceremony. An FBS conference champion deserves a better end to its season than that.
"We are having discussions about it, just knocking around the idea. I think there's something to it because it's new enterprise: best-on-best in the Group of 6. There's a lot of folks out there from the brand and media side that are really interested in knowing more about this. I think we have a responsibility to run that idea out and see what it looks like, and make a decision on whether or not it makes sense to pursue it," Pernetti said.
I see the Pernetti Plan being embraced by fans and teams alike, if the money is there to make it happen. Just one request, though: the trophy should be a replica of the CFPs, with an asterisk in place of the football.