Tag: College Football Playoff Expansion

Phillips addresses topic of College Football Playoff expansion

ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips addressed a number of topics when he took the podium Wednesday morning at the 2022 ACC Football Kickoff in Charlotte, including College Football Playoff expansion. Phillips said the conference “continues to be …

ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips addressed a number of topics when he took the podium Wednesday morning at the 2022 ACC Football Kickoff in Charlotte, including College Football Playoff expansion.

Phillips said the conference “continues to be supportive of an expanded College Football Playoff.” The league voted against expansion last year, he said, because issues such as the new FBS calendar need to be addressed.

“As you know, the ACC took what we believe was a necessary stance regarding last fall’s CFP proposal,” Phillips said. “This was based on what we feel we must all come together to address before rushing into a new model — the implantation of a 365-day calendar, health and safety, and several other items that you know well. Engagement is ongoing with our schools and my fellow commissioners to chart a path forward prior to the expiration of the current CFP contract in 2026. We had two great meetings in April and June, and I’m confident that our concerns and others’ concerns will be addressed, and a new model with greater access will ultimately come to pass. We will do our part in the ACC to make it happen, but there’s some more work to be done.”

Phillips indicated that progress on expansion has been made, saying that CFP commissioners have made “great progress” in their last two meetings this year.

Phillips expects there may be news at the end of August regarding progress toward a new CFP structure, though he said there’s a lot of things to discuss.

“We’re making progress with the Transformation Committee, and I think you’re going to see something at the end of August that’s pretty substantial, with more work to be done,” Phillips said. “I think these things are walking along together, along with a new NCAA president. I don’t expect us in September, when we get together, to line up and announce a new CFP structure.

“But I think we made great progress over our last two meetings, both in April and in June, and everybody’s motivated to come together. So, I don’t know that there’s this separation now with those things. We’ll see. But I think the health and safety, the 365-day calendar review… We’ve talked about access, automatic qualifiers… there’s a lot of things to discuss. But those things, again, I would tell you I do not think have really separated that much.”

Dear Old Clemson’s first event is July 24. Now there is a new way to support Clemson student-athletes. Come out and meet the freshmen football players at this meet and greet autograph session. If you sign up for certain club levels you get free access to all Dear Old Clemson events. Purchase your tickets today at Dear Old Clemson.

Steve Sarkisian voices his opinion in favor of an expanded playoff

Steve Sarkisian wants to see an expanded College Football Playoff.

The College Football Playoff format has been a topic of conversation around the sport for quite some time now.

The current four-team format was put into place in 2014 and has received mixed reviews since.

Many argue expanding the playoff to more teams would decrease the value of the regular season. Part of what makes college football so special is how important every game on the schedule is from start to finish.

The majority of semifinal matchups have resulted in blowouts. Only three of 16 semifinal games stayed within one score. Many believe adding more teams into the fold would just create more lopsided scores.

On the flip side, giving more teams a chance to play for a national title could create more intrigue for the regular season. Having as many teams playing in contention for as long as possible would be great for the sport. It may help create more parody across the nation and help level the playing field.

Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian voiced his opinion in favor of expanding the College Football Playoff this week at the Texas High School Coaches Association Convention.

Contact/Follow us @LonghornsWire on Twitter, and like our page on Facebook to follow ongoing coverage of Texas news, notes and opinions.

Lack of College Football Playoff expansion doesn’t change anything for the Oklahoma Sooners

Contrary to popular belief the College Football Playoff’s decision not to expand doesn’t change anything for the Oklahoma Sooners.

In an 8-3 vote, the College Football Playoff committee wasn’t able to pass a resolution to expand from four teams to 12. While the idea of expansion had generated a lot of momentum over the last year, there are still a lot of things to be ironed out on a number of fronts.

How many teams get automatic bids? How do the conference championship games figure in? What about the bowl games? Are there on-campus matchups? Where does the Group of Five figure into all of this? What about the television contracts for the conferences, the bowls, and the playoff?

It’s a mess no doubt and yet expansion will eventually happen. College Football exists for one reason: To make money. Expansion to 12 provides more opportunities for the conferences, the schools, and the networks to make more of it.

Many have argued that the Oklahoma Sooners should stay in the Big 12 as long as the playoff is at four, arguing it’s a much more difficult path to the four-team playoff in the SEC. Admittedly, that’s true. With Alabama and Georgia at the top of the mountain, running the gauntlet of the SEC is a much tougher task than the Big 12.

The reality is, nothing’s changed for the Oklahoma Sooners.

College Football Playoff Expansion Is Off For Now. Here’s What’s Happening.

The College Football Playoff will stay at four teams for at least the next four years … maybe. Who wins? Who loses? Here’s what you need to know.

The College Football Playoff will stay at four teams through the 2025 season … maybe. Here’s what’s happening and what you need to know.

[mm-video type=playlist id=01f1343a1wt7q817p7 player_id=none image=https://collegefootballnews.com/wp-content/plugins/mm-video/images/playlist-icon.png]

College Football Playoff expansion off until at least 2025 … maybe.

– Contact/Follow @ColFootballNews & @PeteFiutak

2022 College Football Schedules: All 131 Teams
Who wins and who loses if CFP isn’t expanded?

Welcome to the working definition of not being able to walk and chew gum at the same time.

The College Football Playoff will stay at four teams through the 2025 season – the next four years – after the conference commissioners and Notre Dame couldn’t reach an agreement.

Here’s what’s going on.

First, here’s what the deal was supposed to be

Last summer, a few conference commissioners – Greg Sankey (SEC), Bob Bowlsby (Big 12), Craig Thompson (Mountain West), and Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick – put together a proposal for a 12-team expanded playoff.

The idea was for the top six conference champions regardless of conference to automatically get in, and the other six spots would go to the six highest-ranked teams remaining from the College Football Playoff rankings.

It was a relatively square deal.

It assured that a few Group of Five conferences – the American Athletic, Conference USA, MAC, Mountain West, Sun Belt – would be right in the mix with at least one guaranteed a spot, and it accounted for the big Power Five leagues – ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12, SEC – to potentially get more teams in depending on how the seasons flowed.

There were details to iron out about how and where this would all work – like, would it be within the bowl system or would the first round be on the campus of the higher-seeded team? – but those were workable.

But get 12 masters of the universe together and you’ll get 12 totally different opinions.

So …

Who wins and who loses if CFP isn’t expanded?

What’s the problem?

Most of the main concerns aren’t much of a barrier, but overall, it’s not entirely certain why this isn’t quite working other than that the ACC appears to be freaking out a bit.

Commissioner Jim Phillips and the ACC want to do some roll slowing, claiming that this isn’t quite the time for more upheaval in the college athletics world considering all that’s going on with several other seismic changes, but that all seems a tad soft.

One sticking point is the Rose Bowl – the Pac-12 and Big Ten still want their historic ties to the bowl game – and another problem is how this would all work while still maintaining a healthy bowl system, but to reiterate, those are just details that could easily be ironed out if everyone really did want this to happen.

That’s not why the college athletic world is throwing away the opportunity at hundreds of millions of dollars.

Expansion. Without saying it out loud, that’s the problem here, not NIL, the transfer portal, or coaching salaries.

The ACC isn’t in on the expansion fun after totally dropping the ball and not adding UCF, Cincinnati, and Houston when it had the chance. The last thing it wants to do is agree to a bigger College Football Playoff when the landscape could change even more in three years since the conference is ripe for the picking.

The SEC is about to get whole lot bigger and more important with Texas and Oklahoma joining the mix in 2024, if not earlier. There’s no secret that the SEC is on a world domination bender and could at any time get a whole lot more important than it already is.

Don’t think the SEC is stopping its dreams with just Texas and Oklahoma. If it can get those two, everyone is on the table. Geographically, that means the ACC.

Meanwhile, the Big Ten has remained eerily quiet during the expansion moves.

It takes a certain level of school in terms of size, market, prestige, and research for the Big Ten to be interested. It grabbed Maryland away from the ACC in 2014, and in the conference’s perfect world, it would somehow find a way to add perfect-fit North Carolina.

Boston College, Clemson, Duke, Florida State, Georgia Tech, Louisville, Miami, NC State, Syracuse, Virginia, and Virginia Tech all fit into the Big Ten’s Tier 1 Research requirement – as does Notre Dame – and several of those schools would be easy and smart fits for the SEC, too.

Here’s the larger problem for the College Football Playoff expansion. How does all the revenue get distributed?

Fine, so six conference champions get in. What about those other six schools in a 12-team format?

Assume at least two of those spots will go to the SEC every year – especially with Texas and Oklahoma – and assume the Big Ten gets an extra team, and assume that it’s really more like three SEC teams and two extra Big Ten teams, and …

What if the ACC only gets one team in? It’s not in a position right now as a conference to assume it can get anyone but its own champion in – at least until a Florida State or Miami or North Carolina can rise back up.

So who gets all the money? As it is now, the ACC has its bowl deals and is on par with the SEC and Big Ten – sort of. An expanded College Football Playoff screws up the ACC’s possible power.

NEXT: Who wins and loses if the College Football Playoff isn’t expanded? What will happen?

Pages: Page 1, Page 2

ESPN’s Dinich gives the latest on CFP expansion talks

ESPN senior writer Heather Dinich took to Twitter on Thursday, giving the latest on College Football Playoff expansion talks. After two days of meetings in Dallas, Dinich reported that the CFP management committee plans to meet again on Dec. 1 for …

ESPN senior writer Heather Dinich took to Twitter on Thursday, giving the latest on College Football Playoff expansion talks.

After two days of meetings in Dallas, Dinich reported that the CFP management committee plans to meet again on Dec. 1 for more discussion on expansion, and that Executive Director Bill Hancock reiterated that a consensus must be reached by the end of the year in order for a new playoff format to be put in place for the 2024 season.

The biggest issue being discussed by the management committee, which is made up of 10 conference commissioners and Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick, is whether the current four-team format should be expanded to eight or 12 teams.

A 12-team format was proposed in June but the process has since stalled, in part because Big 12 members Texas and Oklahoma being invited to (and eventually joining) the SEC has triggered a new wave of future conference realignment, which also has administrators hesitant to rush into playoff expansion.

Dinich gave the latest on where things stand with CFP expansion talks following the latest meetings in Dallas this week:

Clemson Variety & Frame is doing their part to help bring you some classic new barware and help one of the local businesses that helps make Clemson special.

Order your Nick’s barware and do your part to help.  #SaveNicks

College Football Playoff releases statement on possible expansion

The College Football Playoff management committee met in Dallas on Wednesday to discuss the possible expansion of the playoff, but the committee was not able to agree on whether to expand the current four-team format to 12 teams. “As the committee …

The College Football Playoff management committee met in Dallas on Wednesday to discuss the possible expansion of the playoff, but the committee was not able to agree on whether to expand the current four-team format to 12 teams.

“As the committee moves forward, there remains issues to be discussed,” CFP executive director Bill Hancock said in a statement. “Given the complexity of these matters, the management committee will meet again in Chicago next week to continue our discussions.

“As we said in June when the 12-team playoff was proposed, that was the first step in a long process. It is vital that all issues be fully explored and addressed.

“We look forward to our meeting in Chicago next week.”

The proposal calls for the bracket each year to include the six highest-ranked conference champions, plus the six highest-ranked other teams as determined by the CFP selection committee. No conference would qualify automatically and there would be no limit on the number of participants from a conference.

Under the proposal, the four highest-ranked conference champions would be seeded one through four and each would receive a first-round bye, while teams seeded five through 12 would play each other in the first round on the home field of the higher-ranked team. (The team ranked No. 5 would host No. 12; team No. 6 would meet team No. 11; team No. 7 would play team No. 10; and team No. 8 would meet No. 9.) The quarterfinals, Playoff Semifinals and national championship game would be played at neutral sites.

Clemson Variety & Frame is doing their part to help bring you some classic new barware and help one of the local businesses that helps make Clemson special.

Order your Nick’s barware and do your part to help.  #SaveNicks

A move to the SEC doesn’t change the Sooners College Football Playoff prospects

A move to the SEC may make challenging for a conference title more difficult, but doesn’t change their College Football Playoff prospects.

The ever-evolving landscape of college football continues to provide the top storyline in the country. Today, the Southeastern Conference Presidents will meet to discuss and vote on admission petitions from the University of Oklahoma and the University of Texas to be the 15th and 16th members of the conference.

It’s expected that the vote will be unanimous despite early objections from Texas A&M officials. Though it will only require 11 “yes” votes for the measures to pass, it now appears like all 14 schools will welcome the Sooners and Longhorns with open arms.

One of the many talking points about the pending move for the Oklahoma Sooners is what this does to their college football playoff or national championship aspirations. That’s at the forefront now as the Sooners head into 2021 as one of the favorites to win the national championship. While the road to the conference championship gets rockier in the SEC, the Sooners’ prospects of making the College Football Playoff doesn’t change much.

It wasn’t long ago that the powers that be in college football came up with and released a proposal that would expand the playoff system from four to 12 teams. In a 12 team system, which could go into effect as early as 2022, the Oklahoma Sooners would have just as good a shot as anyone to make the College Football Playoff.

In the proposal, the top four seeds would go to the highest-ranked conference champions. The Group of Five would finally get representation with the highest-ranked conference champion getting admitted to the playoff. Six of the seeds would go to the highest-ranked conference champion, but the Power Five conference champions would not be guaranteed a spot in the playoff.

For example, the 2020 Oregon Ducks won the PAC 12 championship but remained unranked after toppling USC. Though they won their championship, there were six other conference champions that were ranked higher in the last USA Today Coaches Poll before bowl season kicked off.

Looking at that final poll from an SEC perspective, nothing changes much for the Sooners.

In that final poll, the SEC had four teams in the top 10: Alabama, Texas A&M, Georgia, and Florida. Were there a college football playoff in 2020, it’s likely at least three SEC schools are admitted to the playoff. It’s not outside the realm of possibility to think as many as four SEC schools could have made the playoff last season.

Alabama, Clemson, Ohio State, Cincinnati, Oklahoma, and Coastal Carolina represent the six highest-ranked conference champions. Because Notre Dame was relevant in 2020, ranked fourth in the country at the end of the season, they’d get a spot. That leaves five more spots to provide at-large bids to the rest of the country.

Texas A&M and Georgia would have been admitted to a 12-team playoff format and then there are three more spots that could have gone to Iowa State, Florida, Indiana, Northwestern, North Carolina, BYU, Iowa, Louisiana-Lafayette, or Miami.

Iowa State and Indiana probably get two of those at-large bids as the runner-ups in the Big 12 and Big 10. Then that final spot is a free for all but it would be difficult to argue against Florida. Even as the second-best team in the SEC East, there’s certainly an argument that those other options listed above aren’t as good a team as Florida was.

Even from a conservative analysis, the Oklahoma Sooners would enter the SEC as one of the top four or five teams in the conference. At best, they’re the second or third best team in the SEC.

In an SEC that has dominated the college football landscape, getting three teams in the college football playoff seems all but certain and in most seasons, they’ll get a fourth. That’s just how the conference is viewed from a national perspective.

Oklahoma missed out on their first college football playoff in 2020 after a 8-2 season that culminated with a sixth Big 12 Championship and a Cotton Bowl win over the Florida Gators. in a 12-team format, the Sooners are all but guaranteed a spot in the playoffs. Even though the conference schedule gets tougher in the SEC and they’ll be less likely to dominate the conference championship scene the way they have in the Big 12, they’ll still be one of the favorites in the conference. Even if they finish third or fourth in the conference, they’ll still have an inside track at getting into the college football playoff.

And in the playoffs, anything can happen.

Swinney a step ahead on conference realignment

Last week Dabo Swinney shifted gears from talking about the 12-team playoff to discussing potential changes to the structure of college athletics. “I think the bigger question is where is college football going from a structural standpoint?,” …

Last week Dabo Swinney shifted gears from talking about the 12-team playoff to discussing potential changes to the structure of college athletics.

“I think the bigger question is where is college football going from a structural standpoint?,” Swinney asked at the Clemson Football Media Outing. “If it’s a 40-team league but with 130 teams and one trophy it’s not like basketball where you bring in a couple of guys and all the sudden you make a run at it.”

He went on to suggest college football could operate like the Premier League in soccer with a smaller pool of elite teams competing for a title.

The comments seemed odd last Tuesday but as details emerged about the plan for Texas and Oklahoma to leave the Big 12 and join the SEC, Swinney’s questions about the structure of the sport seem much more realistic.

On Tuesday night at the annual Fisher DeBerry Coaches for Charity event Swinney dove deeper into the future of college football with conference realignment.

“I think the first dominoes are falling and ultimately the more expansion you have the more you are going to have super conferences somewhere down the road,” Swinney said in audio obtained by The Clemson Insider. “I don’t know when it is probably five years or 10 years there probably will be some kind of 40, 50, 60 team league that has their own commissioner or whatever with a 12 or 16 team playoff.”

At the beginning of the interview South Carolina head coach Shane Beamer joked that any questions about the College Football Playoff and conference realignment go to Swinney.

The Clemson head coach did not shy away from the questions but again emphasized that his focus remains on the Tigers’ opener against Georgia and that he will play in whatever structure shakes out at the top.

“I don’t know ultimately where it’s going and right now, we’re all about getting ready for Georgia,” Swinney said. “It is what it is and, in our roles, we don’t really have any input in that our job is to get our teams ready and play by whatever rules they give us.”

The SEC announced it received formal requests from Texas and Oklahoma to join the conference at the start of the 2025-26 academic year.

Clemson Variety & Frame is doing their part to help bring you some classic new barware and help one of the local businesses that helps make Clemson special.

Order your Nick’s barware and do yo

Amateurism is dead: How the past 16 months have permanently shaped college football

Oh, the times they are a changin’.

What a wild time to be a college football fan.

Covid-19 stormed into what was shaping up to be a casual 2020 offseason and ripped everything apart. Now, in July 2021, the game has changed so dramatically that there is no return to what once was. Change can be unsettling. Change can be uncomfortable. But change happens all the same.

When I was standing here in 2015, it was my first time to be the commissioner for SEC Football Media Days, and I opened with a song lyric from Bob Dylan way back in 1963, “The Times They Are a-Changin’.” You may recall that Dylan spoke of you in one of the verses in that song: Come writers and critics who prophesize with your pen. Keep your eyes wide open, the chance won’t come again. And don’t speak too soon for the wheel’s still in spin, and there’s no telling who that it’s naming, because the loser now will be later to win, for the times they are a changin’.

If you wonder if I pick songs that have some meaning, I think I got that one right, maybe a little early because the times are changing.

–SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey, July 2021

And in the past 16 months, the game has transformed. Amateurism is dead, and the college football world will never be the same.

So how did amateurism die?

Rewind to March 12, 2020. The Southeastern Conference canceled the rest of its league basketball tournament because of Covid-19 concerns. The NBA had just announced the night prior that it canceled the rest of its season, and the world slowly ground to a halt. Throughout the rest of the spring and summer, collegiate athletics as the United States knew it was in danger of being canceled for the foreseeable future. However, as the summer marched on, there was optimism within the Power five that a college football season would be played. Quickly, the SEC, Big 12, and ACC formed individual plans for their respective teams. College football would exist in some form in 2021.

Eventually, the rest of the Power five followed suit along with the Group of five. But the season would have to be restructured. Players would have to be tested. Fan attendance would have to be regulated. And during rescheduling, some interesting topics were discussed. Should we do away with conference divisions? Should the SEC finally move to a nine-game conference schedule? Will we ever see Ohio State make it through a full season without a blowout loss to (insert random Big Ten basement dweller here)? Should Notre Dame join a conference? The answer to the last question was yes, but only for a moment- just to sneak into the College Football Playoff and get destroyed yet again. Discussions surrounding conference alignments seemed to rumble in the background of the college football landscape.

Fast-forward to a year later to March 2021. Covid-19’s rampage came and went within the United States. Alabama (unsurprisingly) won the national title. Word spread of a bill that California had passed in 2019. This was a bill that would allow college athletes to be paid. California started pushing the bill hard and within a couple of months, other states passed similar bills of their own. During this time the transfer portal was alive and active and introduced a new rule: athletes could now go wherever they wanted once without penalty. College football’s version of free agency.

Then on June 10, 2021, the College Football Playoff committee announced that a sub-group of the College Football Playoff’s management committee presented a proposal to change the current four-team format to a 12-team event. Bill Hancock, Executive Director of the CFP, said that the board of managers will make the final decision, and that decision will not come before the fall. Fanbases across college football were shocked. Finally, there might be parity in a system that seemed to favor a handful of Power five schools. A celebration from the Group of five ensued. I find it entertaining that the same thing was said back in 2013 when the BCS system was thrown away and the CFP was introduced.

Action surrounding NIL continued to pick up steam and on July 1, 2021, college athletes could finally be compensated. Add it to the list of major turning points this offseason. And then, during SEC media days, massive news broke right before Texas A&M coach Jimbo Fisher took the podium to answer questions from the media.

Texas and Oklahoma were trying to join the SEC?

A wild concept, for sure. Initially, I thought there was no validity to the rumor and continued about my day. However, steam picked up quickly, and before SEC media days came to a close, word had spread that the Sooners and Longhorns were expected to announce the plan within a few weeks. Immediately, the realignment theorists emerged from the shadows with models for a 16-team super conference. SEC Network shared its own model, composed of a four-pod system that would force the SEC to move to a nine-game conference schedule. It’s interesting that the network had a specific model prepared and proposed so quickly.

So how did amateurism die in the last 16 months?

It started during the pandemic. Covid-19 gave commissioners time to think about potential models and plans for conference realignments, whether that be within its own conference, or possibly bringing in new schools to compete. I can imagine the loss of revenue made the SEC hungry to make it up. The fastest way to make it up? Bring in two of college football’s wealthiest programs. It also gave the United States time to decide on compensating college athletes. It gave the College Football Playoff committee time to come up with a model that benefited everyone. It gave the NCAA time to bolster their newfound creation, the transfer portal, by allowing athletes to go wherever they wanted one time without penalty.

Today’s game collectively resembles college football’s professional counterpart, the NFL. The National Football League had a 12 team playoff until earlier this year when they expanded it to 14, because of money. The NFL compensates its players to compete. College athletes aren’t being paid directly by the schools but boosters, local businesses, and markets factor into which universities thrive over others.

The NFL has free agency. College players can’t come and go as they please like the NFL’s free agency, but the “recruiting” process is similar because money/NIL deals are a factor. The NFL also uses a four-pod system for its divisions within the AFC and the NFC.

Gone are the days of amateurism in college football and eventually collegiate athletics as a whole (presumably). The SEC is leading the charge in a monumental shift in the way the game is fundamentally played. It’s professional football on a smaller scale. There is still so much to learn in the coming months as we are given more information about conference realignments.

Oh, the times they are a-changin’.

[listicle id=19364]

Contact/Follow us @theauburnwire on Twitter, and like our page on Facebook to follow ongoing coverage of Auburn news, notes, and opinion. 

UGA Football Live with J.C. Shelton: Former Georgia TE Robert Brannon

UGA Football Live with J.C. Shelton: Former Georgia TE Robert Brannon

Former Georgia tight end Robert Brannon (1999-2004) talks about his playing days in Athens under former Georgia coaches Jim Donnan and Mark Richt…

Your friends at UGA Football Live and UGA Wire present your one-stop-shop podcast for all things Georgia football: “UGA Football Live with J.C. Shelton.”

This offseason we will release episodes with interviews, news, rumors and more!

In this episode, I’m joined by special guest, former Georgia tight end Robert Brannon to talk about the 2021 Georgia team and his time as a Bulldog. Brannon won an SEC championship (2002) and played under two legendary Georgia coaches in Jim Donnan and Mark Richt.

Listen here on Spotify:

Listen here, on Apple Podcasts

Also on the show – Recent college football news updates including Reggie Bush’s Heisman Trophy, UGA recruiting misses and Pro Football Focus’ (PFF) All-America and All-SEC teams.

 

Make sure to subscribe, rate and review! And check out our other episodes featuring former Georgia greats like Tavarres King (Ep. 3)  Keith Marshall (Ep. 4) Arthur Lynch (Ep. 6) Malcolm Mitchell (Ep. 7) Drew Butler (Ep. 9) Aaron Murray (Ep. 17) Brandon Boykin and Chris Burnette (Ep. 18)  Rennie Curran (Ep. 24) and Mark Richt (Ep. 27)