GRAPEVINE, Texas — College football commissioners on Wednesday discussed the possibility of growing the College Football Playoff field to 14 or 16 teams when the next CFP contract goes into effect in 2026. They also broached the possibility of adding more automatic qualifier spots, all while acknowledging they’ve got about a month to get it done.
The detailed conversations on changes were anticipated within the group as the CFP faces pressure and a time crunch to finalize its new television deal with ESPN. The CFP management committee is made up of the 10 FBS commissioners and Notre Dame’s athletic director. Members expected the Big Ten and SEC to place specific ideas on the table on Wednesday, and by all accounts they did.
GO DEEPER
As CFP meetings resume, the battle for control of the sport’s future persists
“It was the most productive meeting I’ve been in since I started as commissioner and been fortunate to be in these meetings,” Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti said. “We talked about some formatting and 14 came up. There was a good discussion about that. After that, no details other than we’ve got more work to do. I feel good about the way everyone came together.”
The 12-team model for 2024 and 2025 is set. The Board of Managers, which is made up of university presidents, approved a move from a 6+6 to a 5+7 model on Tuesday in light of the Pac-12’s collapse. Five conference champions will get automatic bids for the next two years with four earning the first-round byes. Seven teams will take up at-large spots.
Now the conversation has fully shifted to 2026 onward, where there is no contract in place and decisions don’t need unanimity. The management committee met for more than eight hours at DFW Airport on Wednesday, including two hours with just the Power 5 conferences and Notre Dame incoming athletic director Pete Bevacqua.
“Today was another example of, through the course of continued conversations, looking at, yes, the potential of going to other numbers, 14, etc.,” ACC commissioner Jim Phillips said.
A 14-team model would, presumably, have two first-round byes rather than four, and a 16-team model would have no byes. Both would provide more spots for the now Power 4 conferences, which have ballooned in size and for, more specifically, the Big Ten and SEC, which have far more CFP appearances between them with their new memberships than other conferences.
GO DEEPER
CFP board approves move to 5+7 model for 2024
While commissioners did acknowledge the size of potential further expansion, they would not get into details on the possibility of adding more automatic qualifying spots, potentially for the Big Ten and SEC. It was something other conferences expected the pair to push for, and it was at least a topic on Wednesday.
“I’m not comfortable giving details because all of this is just now coming up,” CFP executive director Bill Hancock said of auto-bids. “It needs to be talked about on campuses and within the conference board rooms before we go into details on things like that.”
Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark described the auto-bid conversation as exploratory: “We’re just kind of looking at numbers,” he said. “It was brought up. We’ll have to go through the process.”
“All that stuff’s too premature,” Phillips said. “At the end of the day, it’s what’s the right model for (2026) and beyond? We’re continuing to listen to one another and trying to practically put something together that is good for college football, good for the conferences and Notre Dame and also the health and well-being, long-term, of college football.”
After months of refusing to give a deadline, Hancock said the CFP needs to get potential format changes and the subsequent television deal finished within the next month, meaning there will be a small window to tackle these potentially major format changes. It’s also a window in which commissioners will have conference basketball tournaments on their plates. Revenue sharing and voting powers for 2026 onward also remain at the top of discussion.
The Athletic reported last week that ESPN and media representatives for the College Football Playoff agreed on terms for a new television deal and extension, worth $7.8 billion over six years from 2026 to 2032, on top of ESPN having the rights for the 12-team model for the next two years. That agreement hasn’t been voted on yet, and ESPN has become frustrated with how long this has dragged on. CFP officials would not comment if an expanded field would increase the value of that deal.
The idea of more first-round games has not been negotiated in current agreed-upon terms with ESPN according to executives with knowledge of the discussions. While ESPN would be open to talking about them, the $1.3 billion annual agreed-upon average is the budget ESPN had set, so there is no guarantee that more games would mean significantly more money or any more at all.
“We need to be done with this within a month,” Hancock said. “I don’t know that anyone wants to put artificial deadlines on anything, but we need to be done with this. I think today left everyone with an encouraging feeling that we will be done.”
It took almost four years for CFP expansion to go from the creation of a subcommittee to a fully set reality. Now the commissioners — several of whom were not in place when the 12-team model was proposed in summer 2021 — are discussing changing it again before it’s even started. And they don’t have much time to nail it down.
“We discussed everything with no conclusions yet,” outgoing American Athletic Conference commissioner Mike Aresco said. “We’re trying to make some progress.”
(Photo: Kirby Lee / USA Today)
Source link
credite