The College Football Playoff Management Committee is meeting today in Dallas to consider expanding the annual playoff field to 12 teams. The Committee consists of the ten FBS conference commissioners and the Notre Dame athletic director. If they can agree, the playoff would expand for the 2024–25 season, two years before the current playoff term ends. However, it would have to be unanimous, since it means “tearing up” existing contracts that all of these conferences (plus ND) are parties to. If they cannot agree, then the earliest the playoff could expand is 2026–27, after the current contracts expire.

(If you don't like that Notre Dame is treated as an equal with whole conferences, get used to it. None of the conferences have anything like the animosity towards the Irish that the opposing fans do. In fact, it is quite the opposite.)

Why Expand the Playoff?

There are two reasons: access and money. The money piece speaks for itself. The first round games in a 12-team playoff would produce revenue estimated at over $225 million a year. With universities offering record contracts to head coaches while they consider dropping non-revenue sports, they need the cash. It’s a safe rule of college sports that when there is money on the table, it doesn’t stay there for long.

Let's talk about access. Here are a few facts:

1. Twenty out of 28 playoff bids have gone to just four schools: Alabama, Clemson, Ohio State, and Oklahoma. (It will not be so lopsided after this season, since three of those four teams are most likely eliminated, and Alabama needs to upset Georgia to get in.)
2. The Pac-12 has made the playoff just two out of seven years, soon to be two out of eight. The Big 12 has made it four out of seven—but only with Oklahoma. Even the Big Ten has missed the playoff two years out of seven. The SEC and ACC are the only leagues to put at least one team in the playoff every year, although the ACC’s streak is about to end.
3. Strong one-loss teams are often excluded while others are included, with nothing other than a committee’s eye test to distinguish them.
4. No non-Power Five team has ever been in the playoff. Cincinnati could be the first to break that streak if they win their conference this weekend. Still, it is only due to chaos in other conferences that they even have a chance.

(P.S. You may feel that the term “Power Five” is obsolete, now that the Big 12 is about to lose Texas and Oklahoma. You can refer instead to the “Autonomy Five” — the five conferences that were granted, or more accurately seized for themselves, the right to make certain decisions that were previously the NCAA prerogative. The Big 12 is still a member of this cohort. I am just going to refer to the Power Five, or P5, because that is the term more people recognize.)

There's a big argument about whether an expanded playoff makes the regular season more or less relevant. It cuts both ways. Last week’s Game, besides the rivalry implications, was a de facto playoff elimination. In a 12-team field, both Michigan and OSU could be pretty confident that they’d be in the playoff regardless of the result. In that sense, you could argue that playoff expansion makes the regular season less impactful. On the other hand, the ACC and PAC-12 have no realistic playoff chances, no matter what happens in their championship games; and the Big 12 needs help to get in. Overall, an expanded playoff would make many more of the late-season games meaningful.

Why NOT Expand the Playoff?

There are many arguments against expansion, but from the reading I’ve done, it appears no conference favors remaining at four permanently. If they disagree, it is only on the details of exactly how to expand.

There are a few anti-expansion arguments that are basically about “tradition.” Historically, the national championship rewarded the best overall season. Almost all national champions were undefeated or one-loss teams. Every week of the regular season was a de facto national championship elimination game. With a large playoff field, a team could get hot at the end of the year, and win the national championship despite multiple losses earlier. Whether you like it or not, this is a concern that no one in charge of the sport appears to have. The pattern across all sports is that playoffs and season-ending tournaments tend to expand. Yes, it means a wild card can win it all. Every other sport has somehow managed to accept that.

Another traditional argument is that a playoff undermines historic bowl tie-ins. This is a concern mainly for the Big Ten and Pac-12’s commitment to the Rose Bowl. No other conference values its traditional bowl tie-in to that extent. But I have bad news for you. The Rose Bowl lost its guaranteed status in 1998, the year that the Big Ten and Pac-12 joined the BCS. Since then, the Rose Bowl has been a consolation prize. Granted, if you haven’t won anything in a long time, just getting to the Rose Bowl is a pretty good landing spot. Still, it’s no longer the reward for the best season a Big Ten team could have. It’s where Ohio State is now (probably) going because it lost to Michigan.

Of course, the Rose Bowl is a semi-final every third year—but even then it does not include the Big Ten and Pac-12 champs, unless those two teams are coincidentally seeded 1/4 or 2/3, which so far has never happened. Practically nobody under 30 remembers when the Rose Bowl was the best post-season game that a Big Ten or Pac-12 team could aspire to. It won’t be long before nobody under 40 remembers that. Neither the Big Ten nor the Pac-12 is seeking to restore the pre-1998 status quo. Those days are over.

Some people feel that a team should not win the national championship if it did not even win its conference. An extension of this argument is that if Notre Dame wants to play for a championship, they should join a conference like everyone else. Sorry, but even the current format has no such requirement. The 2017–18 champion was Alabama, which won neither its conference nor its division. The prior year, Ohio State also made the playoff while not winning its conference or division. Notre Dame has won numerous national championships as an independent. Whether you liked these outcomes or not, the rules permitted them and still do.

Some university presidents fret about conflicts with holidays and final exams. This seems like a hollow complaint, when FCS has repeatedly expanded its playoff, most recently to 24 teams since 2013.

There are also concerns about player safety and injuries. This seems hollow as well, given that the length of the season has expanded repeatedly. Just to give an idea...

• In the early years of the sport, season lengths were irregular but much shorter than they are now.
• By the 1930s Michigan generally was playing an 8-game regular season.
• Starting in 1943, the regular season bumped up to 9 games (for some reason, they played 10 in 1942)
• Starting in 1965, the regular season bumped up to 10 games
• Starting in 1971, the regular season bumped up to 11 games
• Starting in 1975, the Big Ten allowed all of its teams to qualify for bowls, not just the champ. From that point onward, a 12-game season (counting the bowl) was the norm.
• Starting in 1998, the regular season bumped up to 12 games, or 13 counting the bowl.
• Starting in 2011, the Big Ten division winners played in an extra conference championship game, in addition to a 12-game regular season and a bowl. (The SEC had that game since 1992. All FBS leagues now do.)
• Starting in 2014–15, the top two teams play a extra national championship game after a semi-final bowl game.

In the context of repeatedly expanding the season over an 80-year period, it would seem odd to say only now that we cannot expand due to player safety. This issue is raised every time the season gets longer. And then they do it anyway.

Why a 12-team Playoff?

OK, so the playoff is probably expanding, if not now then eventually. Why 12 teams?

If you’re old enough, you probably remember many years of resistance to a playoff by the leaders of the sport, despite the fact that most fans wanted one. When the playoff finally arrived, it was the minimum: four teams. So when the leaders began to consider expanding, I was sure they’d do the minimum again: eight teams. (You might argue that six is the minimum, but there are huge problems with that: it’s not enough to simultaneously accommodate the power five champions, the best non-P5 champ, a qualified independent, and one or more compelling at-large candidates. Besides that, once they’ve decided to add an extra week to the season, they’re not going to play just two extra games when they could have four.)

The format for an 8-team playoff is obvious. There are already six major bowls, the so-called New Year’s Six (NY6). Four of these would host quarterfinals, the other two semifinals. The championship game would remain an unnamed bowl, as it is today. But remember, I already pointed out that money is a major factor in expansion. Since the NY6 bowls already exist, an 8-team playoff would not make much more money; it would just recharacterize four of the major bowls from exhibitions to games with stakes to advance.

Some leagues have raised a fairness issue with an eight-team playoff. To give an example: in 2019–20 (the most recent non-COVID year), #17 Memphis would have made the playoff as the highest-ranked non-P5 champ; and yet, #8 Wisconsin would have been excluded. That and similar cases make some leagues uncomfortable with an 8-team field, where six of the eight slots are reserved to auto-bids with no consideration as to ranking.

The Most Likely Format

The ten FBS conferences (plus Notre Dame) have been looking at playoff expansion for over two years. For most of that time, this was not public knowledge. Most of the legwork was delegated to a subcommittee of Greg Sankey (SEC commissioner), Bob Bowlsby (Big 12 commissioner), Craig Thompson (Mountain West commissioner), and Jack Swarbrick (Notre Dame AD). The four of them claim to have considered as many as 100 different playoff formats. They eventually arrived at the following:

• 12-team playoff
• Six highest-ranked conference champions (no autobids for the Power Five)
• Six at-large bids
• Top four conference champions get first-round byes (meaning Notre Dame can never get a bye)
• First-round games played at campus sites, hosted by teams seeded 5–8
• First-round losers do not go to a bowl
• Major bowls host quarterfinals and semi-finals. The Rose Bowl would probably be a permanent quarterfinal, so that it can preserve its coveted New Year’s Day 4pm start time.
• Independent championship game, as we have today

Shortly after this was unveiled, Texas and Oklahoma announced they were leaving the Big 12 for the SEC. Obviously, when this proposal was being formulated, one member of the subcommittee (Sankey) knew something materially important that the others didn’t. I’m sure Sankey isn’t getting a Christmas card from Bowlsby this year. But any anger at Sankey must be offset by the fact that the other leagues need expansion more than he does. After all, the SEC has won a majority of the playoff-era championships (4 out of 7), has the highest winning percentage in playoff games (.714, with no other league above .500), and the most championship game appearances (7 out of 14 slots). After this season, the SEC will be the only league that has made the playoff every year.

All playoff formats involve trade-offs. The proposal to stage the first round at campus sites drew objections from a surprising quarter: the Ohio State athletic director. He admitted that he’d love to welcome a southern team to the Horseshoe in the middle of December. But Ohio Stadium (like almost all CFB stadiums) does not normally host football games past Thanksgiving. Unlike NFL stadiums built for these conditions, Ohio Stadium doesn’t have a heated field (neither does the Big House). At least OSU and Michigan have hosted winter hockey games. Most northern CFB stadiums have never hosted a winter event at all. Pipes could freeze.

A consortium of bowl sites made the argument that they should host the first round games. But that would favor southern teams, since most bowl sites are in warm-weather cities. This objection could be countered by placing the first round at regional sites. But invariably, you’d have a year when Detroit is a regional site, and no midwestern team is seeded 5–8. This would mean sending two teams to Detroit when most of their fans are nowhere near there. Most news sources are reporting that the commissioners have concluded that there is no better option than to put the first round on campus. We’ll see how they feel about it when Ole Miss has to play at Madison in a blizzard.

The middle-tier bowls are unhappy because four pretty good teams — the first round losers — would no longer be available. You may be wondering why first-round losers cannot go to a bowl? It comes down to scheduling. There are two options for when the first round could be played: the week after the conference championship games (CCGs), or two weeks after the CCGs. Most people feel that the week after the CCGs is too soon, as it would give the teams too little time to prepare for unfamiliar opponents. Also, teams that did not play for their conference championship would have the advantage of a de facto bye week.

So, the emerging proposal is to stage the first round two weeks after the CCGs. That gives teams adequate time to prepare and at least two weeks since their previous game. But that’s the same weekend that bowl season begins. The scheduling doesn’t work if all the bowls have to wait two extra weeks to determine who is available. That is why first-round losers cannot realistically play in a bowl. I doubt that very many 5–8 seeds will be unhappy about the opportunity to host an extra home game where they will be favored, and the reward for winning is a quarterfinal game at a nice bowl. But 9–12 seeds will lose the chance for a bowl, and instead travel to an inhospitable campus site, possibly in hostile weather, where they will have to play as underdogs.

Autobids are by far the most contentious issue. The subcommittee proposed a hybrid solution: the highest-ranked conference champions receive bids, with at least the possibility that a Power Five champion might not be among them. Historically, the P5 champs are almost always among the top six FBS champs, but exceptions can happen. In last-year’s COVID-shortened season, Oregon won the Pac-12 with a 4–2 record. They were ranked 25th. Had the subcommittee proposal been in effect, Cincinnati of the American and Coastal Carolina of the Sun Belt would have received the last two automatic bids.

The Big 12 and Pac-12, the two weakest Power Five conferences in recent years, have led the charge for giving their champs autobids, regardless of ranking. You might think this is unfair. But like it or not, the power conferences call the shots and always have. If an autobid is the price of getting the Big 12 and Pac-12 to yes, the other three power conferences will give it to them. Commissioner Mike Aresco of The American has been the most vocal opponent of granting any privileges to the Power Five, a term he considers meaningless. Granted, if the proposal had been in place the last seven years, a team from his league would have been the highest ranking non-P5 champ almost every time. But he is now losing most of those teams to the Big 12. He is lucky to still have a job.

Conclusion

Bill Hancock, the Executive Director of the current playoff, says that a decision to expand by 2024–25 must be reached by January at the latest. They would need the next couple of years to rewrite contracts, select media partners, choose host sites, etc. The decision must be unanimous, because it involves tearing up contracts. Any party to those current contracts can veto expansion by saying no. That includes the ten FBS conferences, Notre Dame, and all six major bowls.

But a veto is double-edged. A savvy party might be able to extract concessions they couldn’t otherwise get, since every vote is essential. Maybe, just maybe, the rest of the committee will throw Mike Aresco a bone in exchange for his vote. But when the current contracts expire, he loses his leverage entirely. If he tried that again in the new cycle, they would tell him to pound sand. I am picking on Aresco, but it applies to everybody. Perhaps you remember the old Bowl Alliance days, when most of the power conferences wanted to stage a #1 vs #2 match-up to conclude the season. The Big Ten and Pac-12 refused, so the others just went ahead without them. A few years later, the Big Ten and Pac-12 capitulated. Thus was born the BCS.

In college sports, and football particularly, there’s a long history of waiting years to make seemingly obvious and inevitable decisions. That could happen again. I don’t think it will, but it could. We should know soon.