This is an opinion column.

It’s been a full week since this idea floated like a led zeppelin through the college football atmosphere.

The ESPN headline: Sources: 14-team College Football Playoff has ‘momentum’ would’ve been more of a shock to the system if not for the already disorienting recent drumbeat of proposed changes.

And yet we’ve sat here a week getting crop dusted by this back pasture of a plan. It’s a reminder of the mess they’ve created of this wildly unregulated marketplace. Make no mistake about it, we’re having this conversation because there’s no real adult in a room that — even structurally — is hard to define.

First, the basics.

Before even launching the inaugural 12-team playoff season, they are peddling a plan to supersede the original expansion that took years to ram through. Now, it should be 14?

Of course, they are the SEC and Big Ten it feels like the precursor to the nuclear option.

Seriously. They’re negotiating not just in the boardroom but in public with the leaked plans clearly designed to put pressure on the surviving top conferences.

This is nothing short of an attempted hostile takeover — a test of just how powerful the SEC and Big Ten are in 2024. Fully stocked with their expanded rosters, the Power 2 are reportedly demanding three automatic bids for each, tossing two apiece for the Big 12 and ACC while letting the Group of 5 to wrestle over the others.

There’s more. The SEC and Big Ten would get automatic byes. Like contractual free passes.

All that comes with the threat of — get this — succession from the rest of college sports.

“One high-ranking official,” last week’s ESPN report read in part, “involved in the discussions told ESPN on Wednesday that the presidents and chancellors in both the SEC and Big Ten are having conversations about whether to continue their NCAA membership.”

If so, SEC commissioner Greg Sankey sounds more like The Wolf of Richard Arrington Jr Blvd. Even Jordan Belfort and Gordon Gekko think this is a little aggressive.

In the week since that first ESPN headline, finding a supporter of this model has been impossible. There’s no real defense other than claiming it’s a matter of survival.

And if you thought it was about anything other than the money, I’ve got shares of the Brooklyn Bridge for purchase. It’s all a product of this version of free-market economics.

To be clear, there’s nobody in charge.

No neutral arbiter stands atop this pyramid looking out for the greater good of the sport. The College Football Playoff is more of a collection of contracts than something resembling a league office overseeing the product and safeguarding its future.

It’s a free-for-all.

That’s also how you get an Atlantic Coast Conference with schools on the Pacific Coast and Oregon now a Big Ten rival of Rutgers. All of these moves are good for a few but not for the fans whose loyalty stands at the foundation of it all.

In terms of the College Football Playoff organizational structure, none even exists beyond the 2025 season. The conference leaders haven’t even set the ground rules for the threshold of votes required to implement a plan beyond the two years of 12-team brackets.

It’s like they’ve taken leadership classes from Congress. Remember when they were going to save the sport from NIL? Exactly.

In this structure, the league commissioners draw their power from their membership. Who keeps them in office? The university leadership whose salaries and bonuses flow from the television contracts at the root of all this negotiation.

The kings stay kings.

But who’s really winning?

Would viewers be getting more with almost all 14 playoff spots pre-slotted or with the 12-team plan where seven are at-large selections?

And how does this fit into the jigsaw puzzle of revolutionary change rattling on the horizon of the collegiate sports model. These are understandably dense topics that aren’t quite as fun to read. Bless you for reading this far. There’s a reluctance to even go down these rabbit holes because they ultimately point toward a complete reorganization of institutions, events and calendars that become part of our life.

From athlete unionization to Tennessee’s NIL lawsuit that’s stripping any remanence of power from the NCAA’s enforcement of the recruiting realm, there’s more than smoke on the horizon.

What you’ve always known will look drastically different in the future.

Timelines are uncertain but the train is clearly on the track. Scotch tape and Band-Aids can only hold this together a little longer.

For everyone’s sake, let’s hope this is an overreaction. Perhaps this was all one big negotiating ploy that’ll soon be buried in the potter’s field of failed coups.

Either that or the wolf has entered the henhouse with all the regard of a bull in a china shop.

Michael Casagrande is a reporter for the Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @ByCasagrande or on Facebook.