College Football Playoff to remain 4-team tourney
The conference commissioners who manage the College Football Playoff have decided to stick with a four-team format during this pandemic-altered season after the Pac-12 made a request to consider expansion.
College Football Playoff executive director Bill Hancock said Wednesday that Pac-12 Commissioner Larry Scott asked the rest of management committee to consider having eight teams play for the national championship this season.
The request was made because of disruptions to the season caused by the pandemic. Conferences are not playing the same number of games, are starting play at different times and there are no interconference matchups between Power Five leagues.
Hancock said the committee, with 10 FBS commissioners and Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick, had a “civil and thoughtful discussion.”
“To do it now, it’s such a significant change with so many challenges, especially with the season started, they thought it was best to not make a change,” Hancock said.
Any decision on expansion would need the approval of the CFP’s presidential oversight committee after a recommendation by commissioners.
The playoff semifinals are scheduled for Jan. 1 at the
Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California, and Sugar Bowl in New Orleans. The national championship game is set for Jan. 11 at Hard Rock Stadium.
SEC QBS ON FIRE
SEC fans expecting defenses to be ahead of offenses could not have been prepared for the big passing games from Mississippi State’s K.J. Costello and Florida’s Kyle Trask to open the season.
Trask and Costello were the league’s biggest opening week surprises as they showed they are quarterbacks to be watched in 2020. Trask completed 30 of 42 passes for 416 yards and six touchdowns in a 51-35 win at Mississippi. Trask, opening his first full season as a starter, set a high measuring stick for No. 3 Florida against South Carolina this week.
The biggest shocker came in Baton Rouge, when Costello, a Stanford transfer, passed for an SEC record 623 yards and five touchdowns as the Bulldogs beat No. 6 LSU 44-34. Costello blew past the conference’s passing record that stood for 27 years. Georgia’s Eric Zeier threw for 544 yards against Southern Mississippi in 1993. Costello and No. 16 Mississippi State will test the “Air Raid” attack against Arkansas this week.
Some may have seen the SEC’s 2019 class of quarterbacks as an outlier. After all, it was the first year the league had two quarterbacks selected in the first round of the draft. LSU’s Joe Burrow and Alabama’s Tua Tagovailoa were selected among the top five NFL draft picks.
Florida coach Dan Mullen said the big offense in SEC games was the result of the pandemic which wiped out spring practice.
“Normally at the beginning of the season, everybody is like, ‘OK the defenses are great and the offenses are going to take a little time to catch up,’ ” Mullen said Monday. “I think now that you have eliminated spring ball, when you eliminate the amount of tackling that you have done at this time, you expand this long training camp with the limitations that we had in it. I think it’s an advantage for the offense really.”
ELSEWHERE
Vols: The pandemic cut into the ability to have special teams practice. That showed as Tennessee had to switch long snappers after a bad snap on a punt early in their win at South Carolina and also missed a field goal. Tennessee had to cancel a practice in August and turned a planned scrimmage into a practice.
“I don’t think it’s adding a period or two, it’s about having players available,” UT coach Jeremy Pruitt said. “Your first four practices, you have no specialists there and then maybe 10 out of the next 14 you have over 50 players that are absent. With no spring ball, it’s not like there is any carryover.”