College football playoff expansion talks resume: Friday’s meeting could create bigger ground as early as 2024
Frustrated by the leadership of the FBS commissioners, the college football playoff board will meet on Friday in a bid to adopt an expanded playoff bracket as early as the 2024 season, CBS Sports has learned. Support would likely expand to 12 teams under the core proposal, which was the original concept presented to CFP Working Group stakeholders in June 2021.
The vote must be unanimous among the 11 members of the council. If passed, the expansion would likely triple the playoff berths of the current four teams. The 11-member council includes university CEOs representing each of the 10 FBS conferences, as well as Notre Dame President John Jenkins. Mississippi State President Mark Keenum told ESPN earlier this year that a presidential intervention could come as soon as next summer.
Apparently the timeline has been moved forward.
Commissioners failed in their attempt to reach consensus on a long and drawn-out process that dragged on through 2020 and into February 2022. It was then that the CFP officially announced that the expansion talks were dead . The presumption then was that the playoff expansion would have to wait until at least 2026, when the current deal expires with ESPN.
There is still broad support for CFP media rights to be distributed among multiple bidders. If the expansion is instituted in 2024, ESPN would still have the rights to all games for the final two years of a 12-year contract. Sports Illustrated first reported the approaching CFP reunion.
If the expansion is approved on Friday, the playoffs would expand to at least 12 teams, according to a person involved in the process. However, this source left the door open for a 16-team playoff to be considered by the body.
A 12-team playoff has been valued at $1.2 billion a year, up from $600 million currently.
A subcommittee of commissioners developed a 12-team pool that was favorably received in June 2021. The model included six automatic qualifiers – the six highest-ranked conference champions – and six overall teams. This would likely be the format adopted should the expansion settle to 12 teams. Such support could be adopted as a short-term placeholder with a future expansion to 16 teams if the board agrees to increase the field, sources said.
When asked if the chairs could get the required unanimous vote, a person familiar with the process replied: “I don’t think we have a choice.”
“We realized we had lost control of the narrative as presidents,” the person continued. “We’re actually going to do some settings ourselves.”
The board would only approve the expansion as a concept. It would then be up to the commissioners who make up the PCP management committee to oversee implementation. One of the main questions that remains is whether the CFP can find enough playing sites (possibly on campus for the first games) and set up logistics such as hotel rooms, training facilities , etc. in a short time. While those hurdles remain significant, multiple sources believe it could all be cleared with 28 months until the first expanded playoffs.
“My answer in general is, if people are ready [to do it]anything can happen,” said Mountain West Commissioner Craig Thompson.
Thompson was one of the first four speakers on that task force to model the 12-team squad along with Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick, SEC commissioner Greg Sankey and former Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby.
In a meeting on the day of the CFP National Championship on January 10, the commissioners of the ACC, Big Ten and Pac-12 voted against the expansion, thus scuttling the idea. The final total was 8-3 in favor of expansion, but again a unanimous vote was required. A source in the room said the board largely expected to approve the trustees’ vote that day, but were surprised by how many issues were still being worked out.
A presidential source expressed frustration at not getting the “response” from the commissioners that was needed to move the expansion forward. Since the formal expansion process began in 2019, four of the 10 FBS commissioners have changed – Brett Yormark (Big 12), Kevin Warren (Big Ten), George Kliavkoff (Pac-12) and Jim Phillips (ACC).
The CFP recently announced the sites for the 2025 (Atlanta) and 2026 (South Florida) championship games. These sites will not change if the expansion passes.
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