USA TODAY International Edition
CFP drops clear hint that expansion down the road
Because this is college football, where nothing important happens in a straightforward or efficient manner, one of the more important announcements of the offseason was buried deep in a news release Friday.
Taking the words at face value, it wouldn’t be news at all that the College Football Playoff acknowledged that a working group briefed the 11 university presidents who sit on its management committee about 63 possibilities for a new playoff format, including 6-, 8-, 10-, 12- and 16- team options.
“First and foremost, the working group conveyed to the management committee that it continues to support and believe in the four- team playoff as it is currently constituted,” the release stated in a nugget that was mentioned after plans for stadium capacity for this year’s playoff and the progress being made by the national championship host committee.
To anyone steeped in the history of this organization, soft- pedaling any statement on playoff expansion is complete hogwash. The fact it’s even being formally mentioned at all by CFP executive director Bill Hancock is all but an admission the battle is over. All that’s left is figuring out the details.
Hancock, if you’ll remember, insisted the Bowl Championship Series was here to stay and a fourteam playoff wasn’t the answer for college football right up until the moment the presidents who employ him decided they needed to do a playoff. When Hancock acknowledged a few years ago the CFP may look at moving the dates of the semifinals in years when they fell on New Year’s Eve, guess what? The dates changed shortly thereafter. And from the beginning of the CFP in 2014, Hancock has batted away any speculation about expansion – until now.
You do the math.
While the CFP hasn’t explicitly committed to expanding, it certainly feels like a consensus has been reached within the industry over the last couple of years that the format needs to change.
The reasons aren’t difficult to figure out. TV ratings for the playoff have declined since its debut, with this season’s title game down 27% from 2019’ s despite having TV powerhouses in Alabama and Ohio State. Another factor in eroding interest is the semifinals generally not being competitive
games, which looks even worse because it’s the same handful of teams getting nearly all of those playoff bids.
Meanwhile, the playoff has become so dominant in building the narrative of the season that teams that don’t quite make it to the semifinals have seen less interest from fans in traveling for big bowl games and from top players to compete in them.
Something has to change, and everyone knows that. But figuring out the best path forward is complicated.
That’s what the CFP’s Friday release could have said if officials wanted to be completely transparent. Beyond settling on the number for the bracket, officials will have to figure out how many are automatic bids, whether the Group of Five teams will get a representative and who will do the seeding and selecting of wild- card teams.
Then you have to determine how expansion would fit into the current season structure from a timing standpoint and whether adjustments would need to be made, including a discussion about cutting a regular- season game to address concerns about player safety.
There are also plenty of other logistics that would involve schools hosting the early rounds of these playoff games on campus and academic issues with semester final exams in December.
Oh, and ESPN officials would have to have a seat at that table, too, since they’d be the ones ostensibly having to come up with more money and broadcast more games.
In other words, there’s a lot to work out. But the CFP dropped enough of a hint Friday to suggest it’s well on the way to happening.