CFP expansion talks continue without payoff
DALLAS — The latest meeting on expanding the College Football Playoff wrapped up without an announcement Wednesday as the people involved agreed to keep talking.
Bill Hancock, executive director of the CFP, said there remains a strong consensus among the management committee — made up of the 10 conference commissioners in the Football Bowl Subdivision and Notre Dame’s athletic director — to expand the four-team field.
But how and when? A proposed 12-team model remains at the heart of the discussions, and there is still hope it can be implemented for the 2024 season. How teams would qualify as well as how they would be selected are topics still under discussion.
“I thought there was a chance we’d get to the end today,” Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby said. “We didn’t, and there were good, appropriate reasons why we didn’t. There are people in the room that are differently situated, and they therefore have different perspectives. And they were healthy discussions. I think we made good progress, but we aren’t done.”
There is no firm date for the next meeting, but there is one scheduled for January in conjunction with the CFP championship game in Indianapolis.
Mountain West Conference commissioner Craig Thompson said there are still some who would rather expand only to eight teams. Others are adamant that number won’t work.
“I was part of a group that brought forward a recommendation of six conference champions and six best remaining teams — or you can stay at four,” said Southeastern Conference commissioner Greg Sankey, one of four members of the subcommittee that worked for two years on the 12-team model put forth nearly six months ago.
Where do things stand with that original proposal?
“Well, it’s certainly not been approved,” Sankey said. “Otherwise, we wouldn’t be having this conversation today.”
The seven-hour meeting at a hotel at the Dallas-Fort Worth Airport was the sixth in-person gathering of the management committee since the 12-team proposal was unveiled in June.
The commissioners from the Atlantic Coast Conference, Big Ten and Pac-12, all relatively new to playoff talks, were skeptical of the process from the start and became even more leery of how quickly it was moving toward 12 teams after it was revealed the SEC would be adding current Big 12 members Oklahoma and Texas in the next few years.
Big Ten commissioner Kevin Warren, ACC commissioner Jim Phillips and Pac-12 commissioner George Kliavkoff did not speak with reporters after Wednesday’s meeting. Those three had pushed to revisit the possibility of expansion to only eight teams, though the obstacles to getting agreement on eight were plentiful.
Since then, the road to expansion has become bumpy.
“I wish we had finished in September,” said Bowlsby, who was also a member of the expansion subcommittee with Sankey, Thompson and Notre Dame AD Jack Swarbrick.
At the previous meeting in November, the possibility was raised of tweaking the 12-team proposal to ensure Power Five conference champions have automatic qualification, while only the top-ranked champion from the other five conferences would be guaranteed a spot. That was met with strong opposition from American Athletic Conference commissioner Mike Aresco.
Hancock tried to place a deadline on the process in early October, saying consensus from the commissioners needed to come in the next three or four months.
“We were directed to develop a format and, if possible, implement early,” Sankey said. “So is it still possible to implement early? I think so.”
The presidential oversight committee must approve whatever proposal the management
committee lands on. The university presidents and chancellors usually attend the CFP meeting in conjunction with the title game, which is set this season for Jan. 10 in Indianapolis.
If the commissioners can’t agree on a new model soon, Hancock has said the CFP would continue as is with four teams through the end of the current 12-year television rights deal that expires after the 2025 season. And now?
“I wouldn’t say there’s any hard deadline at this point,” Bowlsby said. “This was a hard day, and I think all of us are tired — and we came away from it with the feeling that we made enough progress to keep moving forward and that the expansion of the playoff, we’re very near consensus that we believe it ought to get large. And there are details to work out.”
Kelly: ‘Bright lights’ of LSU drew him in
BATON ROUGE, La. — Newly hired LSU football coach Brian Kelly can accept if his legacy at storied Notre Dame is tarnished by the sudden and unceremonious way in which he walked away from the Fighting Irish.
“Legacies are not what I spend time thinking about,” Kelly said during his formal introduction Wednesday at LSU. “I came down here because I wanted to be with the best.
“You’re looked at in terms of championships here. And I want that. I want to be under the bright lights. I want to be on the Broadway stage.
That’s what my passion is. So, yeah, that’s part of the draw. There’s no doubt about that.”
Kelly said he had no notion of leaving Notre Dame heading into this season and believes he could have finished his career there. Indeed, Kelly had only good things to say about Notre Dame and the players there that he left behind when he decided to become the first coach to voluntarily
leave the Irish for another job since the AP Poll was launched in 1936.
The Irish finished the regular season 11-1, and they stand a good chance of making the four-team playoff for third time in four years if Alabama and Cincinnati lose their conference title games this weekend.
“I can’t say enough about my 12 years at Notre Dame,” Kelly said. “Those young men I love dearly,
and it made for a difficult decision. But when I was able to look at it and the opportunity here … I believe I can make a significant difference here, and you want to be able to make a difference.”
Kelly was 113-40 as a head coach at Notre Dame, including a current run of five straight double-digit victory seasons. His overall record is 166-62 in 18 seasons in major college football. He also won a pair of Division II national titles at Grand Valley State.
When LSU athletic director Scott Woodward introduced him inside a theater-style meeting room under the north stands in Tiger Stadium, he highlighted a record of sustained success at every stop and proclaimed Kelly “the most accomplished and successful football coach this program has ever hired.”
“Success follows him every where he goes,” said Woodward, who lured Kelly with a 10-year contract offer worth $95 million plus incentives.