Comment The stew and piles of committee meetings surrounding the possible expansion of the College Football Playoff hit a tipping point Friday when the 11-member board that oversees the event unanimously agreed to a much-discussed expansion of the playoff slots from four to 12 at the latest. from the 2026 season. The board, made up of 11 university presidents or chancellors from the 10 major conferences plus Notre Dame, voted in a virtual meeting held Friday. He favored a four-round playoff model featuring the six highest-ranked conference champions by the college football selection committee, then the six highest-ranked major league teams outside of those conference champions. The method would rid the annual selection process of some of its most painful omissions, including conference winners with oddball teams from the Power Five missing out on the four-team playoff and so-called Group of Five schools below the Power Five. whose best teams have battled for playoff spots with often undefeated records hampered by weaker programs. Week 1 college football preview: Bryce Young can make Heisman history “Great day,” Mike Aresco, the commissioner of one of those American Athletic Conference Group of Five leagues, wrote in a text message, noting that “12-team, 6-6 is the model we wanted. It gives us access if we win it.” Under the four-team-in-eight-seasons concept, the ACC has lost overall just once (in 2021), the Big Ten twice, the Big 12 four times and the Pac-12 six times out of eight. The SEC has reached all eight playoffs, including twice with two teams. The new format is set to begin in 2026, once the current 12-year contract expires, but allows another committee, the College Football Playoff Committee, to explore an extension for either the 2024 or 2025 season. That committee consists of the 10 conference commissioners plus Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick. Under the model issued by the board, the top four conference champions will receive a first-round bye. That will lead to eight first-round games at campus sites in December, with the highest seed in each game serving as the host. The quarterfinals and semifinals would be played at the locations of the famous bowl games, with those names, while the final would be played at a selected neutral venue, as is now the case with the four-team format. “This is a historic and exciting day for college football,” said Mark Keenum, Mississippi State president and chairman of the Board of Trustees. It came 15 months after a four-person panel had proposed a 12-team playoff similar to the method approved Friday, eight months after three conference commissioners expressed reservations about the expansion at the time and seven months after the vote left the 8- 3. the idea has stopped. Even in January, amid impasse and frustration over the impasse, commissioners George Kliavkoff of the Pac-12 and Jim Phillips of the ACC publicly reckoned a deal would come. Kliavkoff stressed that decision makers had time. Phillips said, “In the year 13 [2026]we’ll have a deal, I’m sure.” Even with USC and UCLA, Pac-12 football has been pretty bleak They joined Big Ten commissioner Kevin Warren in opposing the green light, and their reasoning differed. The ACC found the schedule turbulent amid other changes in the sport such as the NIL, the transfer portal and the NCAA’s bylaw overhaul in January. The Pac-12 was concerned about maintaining Rose Bowl supremacy in any context. The Big Ten wanted a method in which all conference champions would automatically qualify, even if they had a number of losses that would normally disqualify them for the four-team playoff, in which it never had a team with more than one loss. The idea of expanding the playoffs has generated chatter nearly 15 minutes — or maybe 14 — after the current system began in 2014, when the long-standing system to determine the champions finally switched from a league game to the four-team bracket. Expansion began in June 2021, when the four-person task force advocated for a 12-team method consisting of six conference champions and six at-large teams. The four men, who had studied the possibilities inside and out for two years, were Bob Bowlsby, then the commissioner of the Big 12. Greg Sankey, then and now the commissioner of the SEC. Craig Thompson, then and now the Mountain West commissioner. and Swarbrick of Notre Dame. He did not include any of the three congresses that would be kicked out at meetings the following winter, and he released his ideas publicly, perhaps ranking some others. Marcus Freeman’s astonishing rise at Notre Dame was also predictable Throughout, the Pac-12 said it favored all six models weighed last winter. By Friday, he said he was “strongly in favor of extending the CAP” because of the provision of “increased access and excitement” and “looked forward to working with our conference colleagues to finalize the important elements of an expanded CAP to begin as soon as possible .” The ACC said it “has been clear from the outset that it supports the extension” and described the Board’s decision as “welcome”, adding: “Our partnership over the last six months will serve us well as we tackle the important details of the premiere. event in college football.” The Big Ten, ACC and Pac-12 announced an alliance of common interests in August 2021, but by June 2022, the Big Ten had pursued Southern California and UCLA from the Pac-12 to bring its members at 16 schools from coast to coast as realignment continues to affect which teams could represent the conferences.
