As the futures of Cal, Stanford, Washington State, Oregon State, and SMU remain uncertain, the College Football tournament’s leaders made little headway on Wednesday in terms of major adjustments to the makeup of the ultimate 12-team tournament. All eleven conference commissioners as well as Jack Swarbrick, the athletic director of Notre Dame, were present for the meeting, however ACC commissioner Jim Phillips joined by Zoom teleconference after being forced to cancel last-minute.
Whether those in the room want to admit it or not, the topic at hand was how the likely disintegration of the Pac-12 would effect the playoff structure and whether or not there would be opportunity for another protracted discussion once the 12-team format was thought to be resolved.
Bill Hancock the executive director said :
“We’re gonna have to wait ‘til the dust settles before making any decisions about how that might affect CFP,” “The fact is we just don’t know yet. No one knows how conference realignment is going to wind up. It would just be premature to make any of these decisions about it.”
Was there going to be a 5-7 split or would there still be six automatic qualifiers from conference championships and 6 at-large bids?
The former would probably favor a current Power 5 team getting in as an at-large, while the latter would probably be better for Group of 5 leagues because it would provide them more access to the CFP.
Hancock characterized the few conversations that did take place—about 5-7 in the room—as “esoteric,” which was what he anticipated. Any significant modification to the format would require approval from all 11 school presidents who make up the CFP Board of Managers.
MAC commissioner Jon Jon Steinbrecher said :
“I think that’s a bedrock principle of what we are doing and what we’ve built into this. I think it’s important that that is continued as we move forward. Depending on the number of conferences we have, I think you can have a legitimate conversation about the number of champions that are set here as well as numbers of at-large [bids], but to me, start with the bedrock principle. And I think that’s important that we keep that in there. I did. I felt good coming out of that conversation.”
Progress made on meeting’s original agenda
On the meeting’s original agenda, significant progress was made, including choosing a company to assist the CFP in managing hotel accommodations and settling on relatively minor operational details like $3,000 travel stipends for the families of up to 125 players’ families per team per round when the playoff expands.
The latter may be particularly crucial for first-round games held on university grounds where events like graduations and holiday parties may compete for available space.
It was decided that ticketing for the first round of on-campus games will be decided when the group meets in September. The group has already started discussing where the title games will be held after 2024 (Atlanta) and 2025 (Miami), the first repeat hosts in CFP history.
The quarterfinals, which will be held in bowl venues, will be covered by ESPN; it is unknown at this time whether there will be additional network partners or just ESPN going forward to handle the additional first-round games coming in 2024 and ’25. A full-fledged NFL wild-card weekend configuration with four games on four different networks, according to Hancock, doesn’t seem to have much appeal.
To continue working out the specifics of the impending new system, CFP leaders will get together once more at the end of September and perhaps on a monthly basis through the football season. It is yet unknown if such configuration will require nine or ten conferences.