With expansion looming as a real possibility in the near future for the College Football Playoff, a leading format has emerged according to Pete Thamel of Yahoo Sports. At this point, moving beyond the four teams of the current “playoff” seems inevitable, it is just a matter of coming to terms with a preferred format.
On that note, a surprise has surfaced. According to more than a dozen stakeholders that reportedly included university officials, athletic directors, media executives, and others within collegiate sports, it’s not an eight or ten team model that has emerged as a favorite, but a twelve-team format.
“The reason that you go to 12 is because you can develop the road of least resistance toward a good result,” a high-ranking college official with knowledge of the process told Thamel.
It must be stressed that nothing has been determined and a consensus has yet to be officially reached. There are a couple of days of key meetings coming up on July 17 and 18 in Chicago where a lot of the details will presumably be hammered out. It’s still possible that the four-member working group tasked with coming up with a recommendation will decide to keep things the way they are with the four-team playoff. That group consists of SEC commissioner Greg Sankey, Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby, Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick and Mountain West commissioner Craig Thompson.
Whatever is decided will be presented to the CFP board of managers, a group of 11 presidents and chancellors from the 10 FBS conferences, and Notre Dame to determine the potential shape of a direction to move forward with. That will all happen a week later after the meetings in Chicago.
From there, a lot of hurdles exist to make everyone happy, and that seems to be the reason a 12 team model has emerged as the favorite. Those in the know have pointed to some combination of automatic Power Five bids, at-large bids, and access for the Group of Five teams. There appears to also be momentum to include byes for the highest seeds, but a ton of the framework, schedule, logistics, and media partnerships would need to be hammered out still.
As the College Football Playoff takes shape this month, sources indicate to @YahooSports that a 12-team model is the early favorite to emerge as the next version of the CFP. Here's why: https://t.co/ZBt94PJA2U
— Pete Thamel (@PeteThamel) June 8, 2021
In order to get expansion in the plans, it’ll ultimately have to go through group dynamics and make a lot of people happy. A 12 team playoff seems to be the sweet spot for that to occur.
We’ll have ore on this as it becomes available, but it looks like things are getting more and more real for expansion, it just might look a little different than what we all thought.
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