This is an opinion column.

Mom and Dad were fighting and the kids were yelling in the backseat.

A summer vacation tale as old as vehicular travel.

Also true with the dynamic around the sausage-making process of the College Football Playoff future. Greg Sankey used his pulpit Monday morning to explain it from his perspective in the driver’s seat.

The SEC commissioner is both blunt and subtle.

Sometimes snarky.

Occasionally with a bite of a monotone prison shank.

And as he kicked off SEC Media Days in Atlanta, Sankey explained the power dynamics in the most Sankey ways possible.

He made it clear the SEC and Big Ten were up front, steering the ship. They’ve been closely aligned previously but are disagreeing on how to progress.

There’s a nagging voice coming from the back but Sankey essentially rolled up a newspaper and glared in the rearview mirror.

The Big 12 apparently stepped out of line at its media days and Sankey was happy to do some parenting. Brett Yormark, commissioner of the Big 12, had a lot to say about the decisions to be made on the CFP future that need to be done by December 2025.

Sankey essentially said the Big 12 doesn’t really have much to say about that. He cited the memorandum of understanding signed last year that grants the SEC and Big Ten the power to make that call.

“Unless you’re going to go tear up the MOU,” Sankey said Monday, “which maybe some other people want to do because of their concerns about the decision-making authority, but very clearly in that memorandum of understanding is granted to the combination of the SEC and Big Ten.”

Then he took a direct swipe.

Yormark in his comments said the Big 12 was “doubling down” on a 16-team format that includes five automatic qualifiers from conference champions and 11 at-large teams.

“As I understand doubling down — that was one of the phrases last week,” Sankey said. “That’s part of the gambling experience, as I understand — you always want to have a really good set of cards. You want to have a good hand to play, right? I think we have the best hand to play.”

Yormark also claimed the Big 12 was the “deepest football conference in America” after sending one team to last year’s 12-team playoff. Hey, it’s his job to sell his conference and Yormark is a known showman in these settings.

Sankey isn’t quite as dynamic, but he’s got more juice.

That brings us to the front-seat argument.

The SEC and Big Ten were moving in alignment on how to take the CFP forward with the streamlined decision-making authority. That efficiency was lost when they took very different views on formatting.

Mom and Dad were fighting.

The Big Ten wanted a predetermined number of automatic qualifiers assigned to each conference. The SEC and Big Ten would get four apiece. The Big 12 and ACC would get two apiece.

That didn’t get any support at the SEC spring meetings as the league wanted to keep five conference champion auto qualifiers with everyone else competing for 11 at-large spots (if they expand from 12 to 16).

The Big Ten wanted the SEC to adopt the same 9-game conference schedule they use. The SEC was hesitant to add another loss while arguing its depth was already the most challenging in the nation.

Sankey on Monday said he spoke with Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti four of the five days last week.

No resolution, apparently.

“We had a different view coming out of Destin around the notion of allocations, if you will, and I think you’ll probably hear that again from our coaches,” Sankey said. “The Big Ten has a different view. That’s fine. We have a 12-team playoff, five conference champions. That could stay if we can’t agree.”

That’s the rub.

For all the talk about expanding the playoff and tweaking or completely overhauling the selection process, it could always just … stay the same.

If there’s anything college commissioners and administrators do well, it’s deferring a big decision for another day.

That might never come. The CFP already corrected the biggest issue from Year 1 of the expanded field when moving to straight seeding as opposed to giving byes to four conference champions regardless of ranking. So that already carries over to the new deal that runs from 2026 through the 2031 season.

Getting an adjustment in how the strength of schedules is viewed by the committee would accomplish another SEC objective without an expansion.

So it might not matter so much if Mom and Dad never don’t make up. The CFP won’t collapse if this standoff continues.

It would reinforce the idea even the highest-paid, most influential college football voices are capable of digging in their heels and doing nothing when pressed by a deadline.

Even parents can act like their children, sometimes.

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