Tag: playoff expansion

Report states ‘College Football Playoff expansion to 12 teams on the horizon’

Big changes to College Football could be right around the corner!

The College Football Playoff Board of Managers is apparently frustrated with the lack of movement by the FBS conference commissioners on playoff expansion. Ross Dellenger of Sports Illustrated has announced that as a result of that frustration, the managers will hold a meeting on Friday to discuss adopting an expanded College Football Playoff Bracket to 12 teams as early as the 2024 season.

The CFP Board of Managers is an 11-member committee that includes representatives from the 10 FBS conferences, plus Notre Dame. The vote to expand must be unanimous. The format of the playoff could be the model that was selected as the ideal format last summer after two years of debate and 60 different models. According to Dellinger,

 “In the model, the six highest-ranked conference champions receive an automatic berth while the next six highest-ranked teams get at-large bids into the field. The four highest-ranked conference champions get a first-round bye. First rounds are played on campus while quarterfinals and semifinals are hosted by a rotation of six bowls.”

It’s unknown what will happen at Friday’s meeting. Should expansion be adopted, it could cause several reasonably significant problems for the CFP and its partners, as the number of games would triple with only about two years of lead time to figure out the logistics. There would also be the issue of TV rights, as ESPN holds those rights for the ’24 and ’25 playoffs. How would those rights deals be effected after expansion?

Friday’s meeting should be a wild one. Stay tuned to Cornhuskers Wire for the latest.

Scroll below for a history of the College Football Playoff.

College Football Playoff Board of Managers releases statement on possible expansion

The College Football Playoff Board of Managers have released a statement concerning the expansion of the playoffs.

The expansion of the College Football Playoff just got a bit closer to reality.

On Tuesday, Mark Kennum, the Chairman of the College Football Playoff Board of Managers, released a statement that points toward expansion coming in the near future.

“The College Football Playoff (CFP) board of managers today heard a presentation from a working group appointed to look into the possibility of expanding the College Football Playoff. It was an excellent presentation and on behalf of the board, I am grateful to the four members who spent two years discussing this important issue and arriving at its recommendation for a 12-team playoff.
“The four-team playoff has been a great success and I’m confident it will remain a success. Nevertheless, it is our responsibility to explore options to make it even better by increasing the number of schools that participate in it.
“Having heard the presentation made today by the working group, along with the management committee that joined us for today’s meeting, the board has authorized the management committee to begin a summer review phase that will engage other important voices in this matter. These include many people on our campuses, such as student-athletes, athletics directors, faculty athletics representatives, coaches, and university presidents and chancellors. Their opinions are important, and we want to hear them.
“We have relationships with the bowls and a broadcast partner with whom we will want to consult to explore the feasibility of the 12-team proposal.
“This too will happen during this summer study period. Having given the management committee the charge to look into expansion, it is our duty to take their good work and ascertain whether it is feasible based on the feedback we receive. I caution observers of our process not to rush to conclusions about what this board may decide. The working group has presented us a thorough and thoughtful proposal. There is more work to do, more listening to do and more information needed before we can make a decision.
“We look forward to hearing more and learning more in time for our next meeting in September.”
The idea of expanding the playoffs have been tossed around for the last several seasons after its introduction following the 2014 college football season.

Report: College Football Playoff likely to expand to 12 teams

According to Yahoo, the CFP is expected to grow to 12 teams. Six, eight, and 16 have all been discussed but, 12 is reportedly the number.

[mm-video type=video id=01f7xrs5cvnmc0vfeast playlist_id=01eqbz52bnpekkafqb player_id=none image=https://images2.minutemediacdn.com/image/upload/video/thumbnail/mmplus/01f7xrs5cvnmc0vfeast/01f7xrs5cvnmc0vfeast-c84aca78336b994d592a2f3fc8aec90b.jpg]

College football changed forever when Oklahoma State lost in Ames to Iowa State in 2011. The Cowboys fell on the wrong side of one of the greatest upsets in college football history and finished their season 11-1.

Nick Saban’s Alabama squad jumped Oklahoma State in the polls when it mattered, ultimately facing off against LSU in the national championship. The only issue is that the Crimson Tide had already lost head to head against the Tigers in Tuscaloosa.

We know how the story goes. Alabama wins, people are infuriated with the computer system, and the first rumblings of a playoff begin. It took three years but the BCS was ditched in favor of a four-team playoff in 2014.

Even when introduced, the first question was ‘when will it be expanded?’

The answer: 2021.

According to Pete Thamel of Yahoo, not only is the playoff going to grow, it could have 12 teams. Six, eight, and 16 have all been discussed but university officials, athletic directors, conference commissioners, and media executives feel as if 12 is the right number.

The next three weeks offer a critical period in charting what the future of the College Football Playoff will look like. A pair of CFP meetings are expected to decide a specific recommendation, with a final decision, details and television contract determined later in the fall.

“The reason that you go to 12 is because you can develop the road of least resistance toward a good result,” said a high-ranking college official with knowledge of the process.

A couple of elements would be added to make 12 teams work. The first would be automatic bids. According to Thamel’s report, giving playoff spots to teams who win their conference championship “juices up their league title games as play-in games.” The Group of 5 would have an auto bid as well.

Second would be the previously mentioned venues for the first round. Instead of bowl games, campuses would host at least the first round. From there, neutral sites from the New Year’s Six would host, just as they do today.

To give an example of what a 12 team playoff would look like, we will use the 2019 season. Last year went through too many rough patches thanks to COVID-19 to show a good example.

BYES: No. 1 LSU, No. 2 Clemson, No. 3 Ohio State, No. 4 Oklahoma

All would be automatic qualifiers as well due to winning their conference. The Pac-12 would have its league champion Oregon and Memphis would represent the Group of 5, despite being No. 17 in the final poll.

Here is the first round:

  • No. 5 Georgia vs No. 12 Memphis in Athens, GA (Winner plays Oklahoma)
  • No. 6 Oregon vs No. 11 Utah in Eugene, OR (Winner plays Ohio State)
  • No. 7 Baylor vs No. 10 Penn State in Waco, TX (Winner plays Clemson)
  • No. 8 Wisconsin vs No. 9 Florida (Winner plays LSU)

A “four-member working group” will lay out this idea to SEC commissioner Greg Sankey, Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby, Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick and Mountain West commissioner Craig Thompson on July 17 and July 18 in Chicago.

From there, “a group of 11 presidents and chancellors from the 10 FBS conferences and Notre Dame, will examine what’s put forward and likely determine the potential shape — although not the final details — of the playoff’s future.”

A final decision is expected later in the fall.

College Football Playoff Committee rejects proposal for playoff expansion

According to ESPN, the College Football Playoff committee has squashed any idea of expansion in 2020. It is only a matter of time.

The idea of a College Football Playoff expansion has been a hot topic of discussion in the last several years. Under the current model, only four teams get a shot at the National Champion each year. There are two semifinal games with the winners meeting 10 days later to decide a champion. In the current climate with conferences playing a different number of games, some starting later than others it would be perfect situation to test the waters.

However, Heather Dinich of ESPN is reporting that the committee squashed the idea. At least this year. In her report, one Power Five commissioner pitched the idea of an eight-team playoff.

“They decided that doing that now would be such a significant change, and come with so many challenges, especially given the timing with the season already underway, that they concluded that the best outcome would be to make no changes in the format,” Hancock told ESPN. “They will continue to discuss the future, which is just good, responsible business practice, although I must say that dealing with COVID has become everyone’s focus now.”

While it is a valid point that it might be a bit late in the game this year for expansion, it should have already been on the docket for discussion. As it sits right now, most projections have Alabama, Clemson, Ohio State and Florida as the playoff teams for this season. The Pac-12 and Big Ten conferences aren’t starting their season until late October.

Due to the fact that there are little to no nonconference games, the ability to pick which teams will make it is a difficult one. Expansion would only help those teams who were just on the outside. Maybe a team like Central Florida who has run the table before but not received a fair shake due to the Power Five schools at the top.

As Stanford head coach David Shaw stated, it is going to happen at some point. So maybe there is hope for next season but for now it will move forward with just four teams in 2020.

NFL owners vote to approve expanded 14-team playoff format

The NFL’s anticipated playoff expansion officially passed.

NFL team owners approved a plan to expand the playoffs to 14 teams, starting with the 2020 season.

During a conference call to discuss league business after the annual meetings were canceled due to the new coronavirus, the owners also awarded one of those extra games to CBS and one to NBC. Three-fourths of the 32 owners needed to approve the change, and the vote was unanimous.

Only the teams with the best record in the AFC and NFC will get a bye under the new format. In the past, the top two teams in each conference skipped wild card weekend. The seventh seed will play No. 2, the sixth will play No. 3 and the fifth will be at the fourth seed for wild card games.

Three games are set for Saturday and Sunday, Jan. 9-10 — pending the NFL schedule going forward as planned. The schedule likely will be released on May 9.

This marks the first time in 30 years the NFL has expanded the playoffs. They last did it in 1990, going from 10 playoff teams to 12.

Report: NFL owners to vote on expanded playoffs next week

In what is the biggest fait accompli in the history of the NFL, owners will vote on whether to expand the playoffs to 14 teams next week. This will obviously be done through a conference call or digital means since the NFL – much like every other …

In what is the biggest fait accompli in the history of the NFL, owners will vote on whether to expand the playoffs to 14 teams next week. This will obviously be done through a conference call or digital means since the NFL — much like every other major company in the United States — is currently essentially shutdown and practicing social distancing. There’s no way they will get a bunch of owners — many of whom are in the demographic most affected by Covid-19 — in one room at one time.

Once the owners vote in the expanded playoff system, there will be other things they need to address. They need to decide how they will structure the first weekend of playoffs, although that seems to have an easy answer where they put three games on Saturday and three games on Sunday. Maybe they try and add an extra day, but logistics will be very difficult if they choose to go that route.

The next major question to answer will be how to open up the television rights. The league will want to get their new TV deals done now, but there are some business issues since the economy has slowed down since novel coronavirus became an issue in the U.S.. If content distributors don’t want to sign the long-term deals the NFL is interested in, then there must be a bridge from this season to the next season when new deals will be agreed upon. That means the league could find itself selling a two-game playoff package — which is fine, people will still pay.

Voting isn’t the final step. There are a lot of moving parts here and that will have to be discussed even though it’s pretty obvious that the league will choose to expand the playoffs. There’s no reason not to and possibly billions of reasons to do so.

College Football Playoff Expansion: Would you Want It?

What does nobody have a logical complaint about this year though yet is still complained about regularly?
The College Football Playoff and how it needs expanded.

It’s that time of year that there are no major college football games to react to for a couple weeks aside from Army/Navy so in the tradition of the internet we’re left with a lot of venting of frustrations.

Some people are mad their coach is still around (Looking at you, USC…).

Some people are mad about the inferior bowl game their team got selected to (what’s up Fighting Irish fans?).

And others are mad about recruits flipping commitments and instead choosing a rival (Hey, Auburn!).

What does nobody have a logical complaint about this year though yet is still complained about regularly?

The College Football Playoff and how it needs expanded.

Each time I look on Twitter (I swear if it wasn’t for work I’d drop it and Facebook faster than Braden Lenzy could run past a Navy defender) it’s as if another “New and Improved” playoff format is being proposed.

Ross does great work and I have no doubt these talks have been had. I only have one question about it though:

Why?

This year’s playoff was perfect. Do we really need to see a two-loss Oregon team get added for winning the Pac-12? Does Baylor deserve in because they lost close twice to Oklahoma? Should LSU have to beat Alabama or Georgia a second time to prove they’re title worthy?

The answer to all of these is an emphatic “NO!”.

The ideas to include even more – 12 or 16 squads?

Ridiculous.

Who in their right might mind wants to see three-loss Auburn, Wisconsin, Michigan or Notre Dame get a shot?

They’re all in the top 16.

I like the idea of the regular season mattering in a big way. Rewarding good but great teams for good but not great play takes away the importance.

LSU versus Alabama was great a month ago but you know why? Because it was essentially an elimination game for the CFP.

I get the lack of excitement over heading to the Camping World Bowl but would you rather see an undeserving Notre Dame team get a playoff chance and get smoked by LSU?

I don’t see the point of that.

Because they come close to earning it and LSU shouldn’t have to beat yet another top 25 team and risk another week of injuries since its football after-all, to try to win a title.

Expansion to six teams could make sense in my eyes because it protects against the extremely unlikely chance that all five Power Five Conference champs end a season unbeaten yet one gets left out.

Beyond that is simply rewarding good, not great and I couldn’t be more against it.