TE Caden Piening will be hosted by UCF and Florida.

Florida is scheduled to host two visits from one of Ohio’s finest.

According to Anderson head coach Evan Dreyer, Cincinnati Anderson tight end Caden Piening will visit Florida on March 9 and UCF on March 11.

Piening recently listed both colleges among its top 10.

“He’s looking forward to getting down there and meeting [Florida tight ends coach] Russ Callaway and checking it out and then getting over and meeting [UCF tight ends coach] Brian Blackmon,” said Dreyer.

It’s probably better that the Big Ten and SEC are planning whatever it is.
The Big Ten and SEC are lining up behind closed doors to battle for what has been obvious to supporters for more than ten years: the power to demand greater funding and influence the national dialogue on governance.

The College Football Playoff is rapidly approaching another turning moment. The organization’s goal of maintaining unity seems out of date as the Big Ten and SEC struggle for more influence.

The long-awaited implementation of the 5+7 format in the next 12-team playoff—which features the seven at-large bids for the next seven highest-ranked teams plus the five conference champions—cleared one obstacle on Tuesday. If Kirk Schulz, the president of Washington State and one of the two surviving Pac-12 members, hadn’t been the only member of the CFP Board of Managers to voice opposition, that model may have been adopted sooner.

With nothing more than the Pac-12 brand and a plea for assistance in  realignmentA the bitter Pacific Northwest, two schools left behind in leagueone-month delay in legislation within the CFP was caused by a scheduling cooperation with the Mountain West Conference. Their disagreement? With just two programs, the Pac-12 desired to keep its existing power (voting and revenue) as a 12-team league into 2026.

It sounds absurd. The whole sport being held up by two teams? Yes, it did happen, and although it took some time, business reason, or common sense, won out over empathy.

Imagine, then, what the system could suffer if the two commissioners in charge of 34 programs in the richest conferences in the sport decided to show off in the boardroom. That is the next phase for the CFP, which, with its vote on Tuesday, only guaranteed its new format until the 2025 season. For 2026 and beyond, more changes are in store.

A $7 billion mound of money sits in the middle of the room, where there is a power struggle. And the older guys desire more money in their pockets as they get bigger. The goal of the proposed restructuring of CFP’s rewards is to provide the Big Ten and SEC, not the ACC or Big 12. According to Yahoo Sports, the Power 2 also wants many guaranteed berths in the new postseason, which will include automatic qualifiers beginning in 2026.

It is true that the biggest and greatest conferences attract the most attention (better TV ratings) and field the best teams, but it doesn’t mean the Big Ten or SEC will muscle their way to achieve what they want. Should there be a 12-team CFPSeven Big Ten and SEC teams would have been on the field in December of last year. Eleven of the twelve teams in the CFP would have come from the Power 2 in the newly enlarged SEC and Big Ten. The SEC and Big Ten have good points, and they’ll probably win out in the near future. Once more, even in the hypothetical realm of competitive equality, it merely generates money.

So why is there a requirement of two automatic qualifiers for every conference? Money guaranteed, of course, and more influence in the executive suite. When the organization is reorganized, it is probable that the CFP committees won’t need unanimous consent to adopt legislation in the future. The Big Ten and SEC will be at the top of the new CFP power pyramid, which will have levels.

From a competitive perspective, the 5+7 structure must endure in order to preserve the appearance of competitive equity. Tony Pettiti, the commissioner of the Big Ten, will counter that adding 14 or 16 teams to the postseason in 2026 will benefit everyone. The board of managers and the CFP committee will talk about such matters. A shift of this kind is likely given the balance ofThe NCAA also faces ongoing legal problems due to litigation contesting its authority over the transfer site and its name, image, and likeness. Project DI, the NCAA’s proposal for college athlete compensation, is not appropriate for all schools, and it will simply widen the gap between the privileged and the underprivileged.

In the meanwhile, the Big Ten and SEC have teamed together to create an advisory group to develop solutions regarding the NCAA; however, they have chosen not to extend an invitation to the ACC or Big 12. Red flags were obviously and predictably raised throughout the nation despite SEC commissioner Greg Sankey’s promises, as reported on Yahoo! Sports, that the advisory board was established to “benefit everybody in theecosystem.”

It’s still a step closer to the inevitable, though. The question of whether the Big Ten and SEC will leave the NCAA and/or CFP is not relevant here. The SEC and Big Ten are sick of the laborious procedures that must be followed in order to complete tasks within the current system, which has failed miserably to keep up with changes in collegiate athletics since states passed NIL laws and the transfer portal introduced new difficulties to the system four years ago.

Perhaps college sports has to adopt a more proactive stance like the Big Ten and SEC have in order to successfully navigate a significantly different future.