LAS VEGAS — Jim Phillips didn’t hesitate in his answer to the question.
Should this year’s College Football Playoff selections trigger expansion to the postseason field?
“Absolutely,” the ACC commissioner said Wednesday morning from the Sports Business Journal’s annual college athletics forum at the Aria Casino. “If you're leaving teams out of the playoff that could win a national championship, then you don't have the right number.”
About 24 hours prior to Phillips’ comments, somewhere within a conference room at the nearby Bellagio Casino, three of the power conference commissioners — Phillips, Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark and the SEC’s Greg Sankey — gathered in person, with a fourth joining virtually (Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti), to discuss exactly that: expanding the playoff field.
College leaders didn’t arrive at any formal decision, but out of the gathering came a clear direction and more momentum toward expanding the field from 12 to 16 teams — perhaps sooner rather than later. The commissioners are expected to meet again soon and, at some point, present a model or models to the full playoff governing board, the CFP Management Committee, made up of the 10 FBS conference commissioners and Notre Dame’s athletic director.
If expansion is to happen by next season, they must make a decision by Jan. 23, a deadline set by ESPN that’s been moved from an original date of Dec. 1.
On Wednesday, Phillips says he “prefers” expansion to happen by next season. Other commissioners have voiced a similar message. While an immediate expansion of the field for next season at first seemed unlikely — even Yormark said so earlier this fall - the extension of the deadline provided a path for such a move.
Still, there are hurdles.
Petitti and Big Ten officials, long critical of the selection committee’s subjectivity, have proposed a 24-team format with four automatic qualifiers designated for each of the four power leagues, plus two spots for the highest-ranked non-power league champions and six at-large. Big Ten leadership delivered the 24-team presentation to the other three commissioners last month in Charlotte — a format that would trigger a wholesale change to college football’s postseason structure, including the likely elimination of championship games.
Despite some athletic administrators interested in such a format, commissioners — even those from the non-power conferences — have aligned behind a 16-team format with five automatic qualifiers and 11 at-large bids. That includes the SEC. The SEC and Big Ten must agree on a format for it to be adopted, according to a memorandum of understanding that commissioners entered into last spring granting the two leagues authority.
A move to 16 teams is seen by some as the next step in the evolution of the playoff that, perhaps one day, will grow to more than 20 teams — a compromise of sorts for the Big Ten leaders.
Phillips even hinted at such Wednesday. Asked here about an expansion to 16, Phillips said, “you may need to look a little bit more than that.” He called the meeting Tuesday among the commissioners as “a great session.”
Three non-power league commissioners present here in Vegas told Yahoo Sports that they remain committed to the “5+11” 16-team format, including American commissioner Tim Pernetti.
“The fan response to teams being left out is understandable and the teams in the CFP are championship-level programs,” he told Yahoo Sports on Tuesday. “There is no magic number, and we believe expansion to a 5+11 model, without automatic qualifiers, and a protected window for the Army-Navy game, protects the integrity of a true playoff model and provides a path for the most deserving programs.”
MAC commissioner Jon Steinbrecher says he’s been a proponent of a 16-team field, “but I also think 12 works pretty darn well. Doesn’t matter where we draw the line, there’s going to be people on the outside who are going to be pretty upset,” he said.
“I think a 16-team format makes a lot of sense with the five highest-ranked conference champions and a bunch of at-larges to allow teams to compete,” Pac-12 commissioner Teresa Gould added.
While the debate over expansion marches forward, a new debate has surfaced: a change to the public CFP selection process.
Notre Dame athletic director Pete Bevacqua, whose team was the first out of the field, told Yahoo Sports on Sunday that he supports the elimination of the five weekly ranking shows televised on ESPN as they are a “farce,” “absolute joke” and “waste or time.” They leave schools, like Notre Dame, with a false sense of hope, he said. The Irish, ranked ahead of Miami for the final five weeks of the regular season, slipped behind the Hurricanes in the final poll.
Others are now publicly supporting Bevacqua, including Phillips, who described the rankings shows on Wednesday as “incredibly disruptive” and believes they cause “stress and friction” to the process.
“I understand why they do the shows and it’s part of the agreement with ESPN, but it causes great anxiety throughout,” he said. “We have to find a better way moving forward.”
Steinbrecher says that commissioners have for years privately held discussions about limiting the shows.
“They are maybe not the best thing for the enterprise itself,” Steinbrecher says of the shows. “I think it’s a subject we should revisit and have a very direct conversation with our TV partner.”
Former Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby once told Yahoo Sports that, years ago, he suggested holding just two shows rather than six — one in early-to-mid November, and a final show after the championship games. “But ESPN would flip out,” he said.
Under the new CFP television contract agreed to last spring, ESPN pays the conferences more than $1 billion annually for the right to the playoff. That includes six rankings shows in which the latest rankings are revealed, followed by a news conference with the chair.
“There’s two ways of looking at that,” Gould said. “On one hand, it creates a somewhat premature expectation about where teams are sitting. However, the positive is, we are trying to grow college football’s brand. The fan engagement and interest and eyeballs, [the shows] do that. People watch it.”
ESPN declined comment on the issue when Yahoo Sports reached out earlier this week.
Even if the shows were no longer held, the 13-member CFP selection committee would likely continue its current method of discussing the teams and ranking them ahead of the final poll.
Expansion of the playoff is another topic entirely.
If the playoff expands beyond 14 teams, a new renegotiated deal with ESPN likely needs to be struck. The CFP’s MOU last spring only covers playoff fields of 12-14 teams. While the core tenants of the agreement may remain the same, the financial components will need changing with four more teams and two more games.
How expansion beyond 14 teams impacts other concepts in the MOU, such as guarantees for Notre Dame and the five highest-ranked conference champions, is not clear. Bevacqua revealed on Sunday that, as part of the MOU, Notre Dame is assured of making the playoffs if it is ranked in the the top 12 starting next year.
For instance, if this year’s circumstances unfold next year, the final at-large team (Miami) would have gotten automatically bumped from the field for No. 11 Notre Dame. If the playoff is expanded to 14 teams and there are more at-large berths added to the field (from seven to nine), Notre Dame is guaranteed into the field if it is ranked No. 13 or better, according to the MOU, Bevacqua said.
While the Irish missing the field has resulted in criticism toward the CFP process, the real culprit may have been the ACC’s tie-breaker situation, which sent Duke to the league championship game instead of Miami, the higher-ranked team in the CFP poll. Duke’s upset of Virginia put a second non-power league champion, JMU (Sun Belt), into the field as the fifth highest-ranked conference champ.
On Wednesday, Phillips said the league is exploring a change to the tiebreakers that may include a “CFP component.” He also suggested that all conferences align with standardized tiebreakers.
“We are all going to nine [conference] games and have 16 or 18 [teams],” he said. “Maybe there is something that allows less confusion about what everybody’s tiebreaker is in college football.”