CHARLOTTE, N.C. — There’s a little more than three months left before the power conferences have to finalize the College Football Playoff format for 2026, and the growth that seemed all but inevitable — from 12 to 14 or 16 teams after the success of last season’s expanded field — remains stalled.

While the Big Ten continues to push for allocated spots for each conference, four each for itself and the SEC and only two for the ACC and Big 12, SEC commissioner Greg Sankey has recently moderated his tone on that format after his coaches pointed out that might actually result in fewer SEC teams in the field.

And while the Big Ten and SEC have the power to call their own shot on that, they have to cooperate with the ACC and Big 12 on everything from the NCAA basketball tournament expansion discussion to implementation of the House settlement and other governance matters. There are still a lot of levers to pull.

It remains incumbent upon the ACC to pull all of them, because any restricted access to the CFP would be nothing less than an existential threat to the conference’s existence.

“That’s one of the consequences, absolutely,” ACC commissioner Jim Phillips agreed Tuesday, in a conversation with the News & Observer. “That’s why I’m adamant about the position. And I understand why others may want that. But in my view that’s not healthy for this league and it’s not healthy for college football.”

Just because the ACC only had two worthy candidates a year ago doesn’t mean it will only ever have two, and maintaining the opportunity to get multiple teams into the playoff is tantamount to a fight for survival, especially as 2030 approaches and the bonds that hold the ACC together begin to weaken.

Curiously, this is one area, football-wise, where the ACC and Notre Dame are aligned, the rare instance where what’s good for ACC football is also good for Notre Dame football, and that’s a powerful ally to have.

Clearly, a 12-team field with seven at-large teams worked, and there’s too much money on the table not to expand, and going from 12 to 16 doesn’t add any weeks to the calendar, so many of the issues that have held back the expansion of the basketball tournaments beyond 68 teams are not present in football. The obstacle here is purely political.

“We have to find something better than that, or something that is more attractive to the group in order to move off of five-seven,” Phillips said. “It was a historic success last year and I think everybody wants to make sure we don’t move off of that unless there is something that is better for college football. …

“You have to reward conference champions. That matters. At the beginning of the season, there should be no predetermined outcomes as it relates to who gets what. You earn your spot. That’s part of this idea of fairness and access that I keep talking about. I don’t want an artificial system and I don’t want an invitational.”

The Big Ten, from a position of financial strength but football weakness in depth — top-heavy with Ohio State, Michigan, Penn State and Oregon, but weaker down the ladder — wants to leverage its power into guarantees. In professional sports, where the pool is smaller and schedules are more balanced, that makes more sense, but the vast diversity of college football, if not quite that of college basketball, demands more flexibility.

The CFP acknowledged that after last season by removing the byes for the top four conference champions and going to straight seeding, rewarding overall performance instead of deeding property in advance, while still reserving spots for champions, as it should.

Continue to tweak the selection process if needed — every NCAA sport could take a cue from hockey, where the selection is done by a mutually agreeable formula and the committee’s job is limited to seeding and scheduling — but handing out spots by conference wouldn’t just hurt the ACC, it would turn a national championship into a postseason exhibition.

Everyone but the Big Ten seems to have come around to that reality, but the fact that the new format remains up in the air as time ticks down — amid a concurrent open debate over whether many conference games each league plays, the SEC in particular, puts a thumb on the scale — certainly indicates that coming to an agreement has not been, and will not be, easy.

Good.

If the ACC has to fight kicking and screaming to the end, so be it. Football is too important to willingly accept second-class status in advance.