College Football Playoff won’t expand. Mountain West leader calls it ‘missed opportunity’
Mountain West Commissioner Craig Thompson testified before Congress on the need for a College Football Playoff in 2009, and he’s been working behind the scenes for the past few years to find a way to include more teams.
Thompson said during Mountain West media days in Las Vegas last July that a group of commissioners, including himself, and Notre Dame Athletic Director Jack Swarbrick had been meeting the past couple of years to discuss plans for expansion.
“Behind the NFL, college football is the No. 2 watched sport in the country, and to maintain that status and stay relevant we have to do something different,” Thompson told the Statesman last summer. “What is something different? It’s involving more teams.”
Thompson and Swarbrick were joined by Big 12 Commissioner Bob Bowlsby and SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey in a working group that drafted a proposal to expand the four-team College Football Playoff to 12 teams, but that plan is on hold for now.
The College Football Playoff will remain at four teams at least until the current 12-year contract expires after the 2025 season, the CFP Board of Managers announced Friday.
“If I were the czar of college football or college sports, there’s a lot of things I would change, but near the top of the list would be expanding the college football playoff,” Thompson said Friday. “I’m frustrated because the proposal we came up with over a couple years of deliberation was well received. There’s not a lot of things in college sports that get universal support, but that seemed to be one of them.”
Thompson declined to divulge how the board voted Friday, but he said an expanded playoff was supported by most commissioners and university presidents around the country.
“I think this was a missed opportunity for college football today,” Thompson said.
Thompson said a number of factors kept the board from voting to expand the playoff, including disagreements over automatic bids for Power Five teams, future revenue distributions and the Rose Bowl’s desire to be locked into playing on Jan. 1 even if the playoff field expands.
The CFP field may not expand under its current leaders, but Thompson said he hasn’t lost faith.
“I have been a playoff guy from the beginning, and I do still believe it will expand,” he said. “It has to.”
The plan for a 12-team playoff was approved by the CFP management committee last June, and just a week later, the CFP Board of Managers approved a feasibility study of the expansion. It was expected to be voted on during the board’s meeting in September, but the board delayed taking any action. The board also met in December and January without taking action, and it has canceled its next meeting, which was scheduled for March 2.
“Even though the outcome did not lead to a recommendation for an early expansion before the end of the current 12-year contract, the discussions have been helpful and informative,” Bill Hancock, executive director of the College Football Playoff, said in a statement on Friday. “I am sure they will serve as a useful guide for the Board of Managers ... as we determine what the playoff will look like beginning in the 2026-2027 season.”
Under the proposed model, the six highest-ranked conference champions and the next six highest-ranked teams would have filled the bracket. There would be no automatic qualifiers for Power Five conferences. The top four teams would receive first-round byes, with the No. 12 seed playing the No. 5 seed, and so on.
“It’s a great opportunity, coupled with the fact that we have to do something to maintain, if not grow, interest in college football,” Thompson said.
The current four-team format — adopted in 2014 — takes the top four teams, as voted on by the CFP selection committee, and places them in two of six bowl games: the Rose, Sugar, Cotton, Orange, Fiesta and Peach. The semifinals rotate through the six bowls on a three-year cycle.
The Peach Bowl and Fiesta Bowl will host the semifinals this season.
An expanded playoff is also expected to come with a big payday. TV revenues for what would be an 11-game playoff could reach $1.9 billion, according to projections by Navigate — a consulting firm that works with professional leagues and college conferences. ESPN’s current deal with the CFP pays more than $600 million a year, when separate contracts with the Rose, Sugar and Orange bowls are factored in.
The Power Five conferences get most of that money. In 2019-20, the Big Ten, Big 12, ACC, Pac-12 and SEC each received $67 million. The other five FBS conferences — including the Mountain West — shared $92 million, according to a story in USA Today.
An expanded playoff field would also create more opportunities for Group of Five teams.
Had the field been expanded last year, just one Group of Five team would have made it: American Athletic Conference champion Cincinnati, which was in the four-team playoff. It would have been joined by fellow conference champions Alabama (SEC), Michigan (Big 10), Baylor (Big 12), Utah (Pac-12) and Pittsburgh (ACC), while Georgia, Notre Dame, Ohio State, Ole Miss, Oklahoma State and Michigan State received at-large bids.
In 2020, two Group of Five teams would have made the expanded field: Cincinnati and Coastal Carolina. Pac-12 champion Oregon — which was No. 25 in the final CFP rankings — would not have made it.
Expanding the college football playoff is not only a well-deserved opportunity for teams outside of Power Five conferences, it’s what’s best for the sport, according to Boise State football coach Andy Avalos.
“I think it’s awesome for college football,” Avalos told reporters at media days last July. “It provides opportunities, and we’ve all seen what the NFL playoff looks like, and the fan base and how much everybody gets involved. It’s not just Sunday or Saturday if there’s a playoff game, it’s the topic of discussion all week.”
