At Big Ten spring meetings, coaches lobby for 24-team playoff - ESPN

RANCHO PALOS VERDES, Calif. — Outside the meeting rooms at a swanky resort in Southern California, the Big Ten displayed some signature art for the league's annual meetings.

It prominently featured three of the national championship trophies won by the conference this year — Indiana's football trophy and the basketball trophies won by the UCLA women and Michigan men.

Coming off three consecutive national titles in football, the Big Ten's voice will be heard louder this offseason. The league formally invited reporters to the spring meetings, a departure from the recent past and a move that mimics the heavily covered SEC meetings that take place annually in Florida after Memorial Day.

«I just felt like if messages were getting out of one part of the country and not the other part of the country, some of the things that we wanted to share that we really believe in was getting missed,» said Washington football coach Jedd Fisch, who advocated for more coverage of the meetings.

Fisch rattled off the names of the past six football teams to play for the national championship — Washington, Michigan, Ohio State, Notre Dame, Indiana and Miami. None are in the SEC.

«I think if we continued to not express that,» he said of the Big Ten's message, «it was going to be much harder for the whole nation to understand where we're coming from.»

It's clear from the early snippets of conversation that the Big Ten coaches remain convicted on moving to a 24-team College Football Playoff, an idea that began in the conference less than a year ago and has gained support across the ACC and Big 12.

Whether the idea gains traction at the highest levels of the SEC will be a question that looms over the sport next week, as it is clearly the model