ESPN is reporting that ESPN and the College Football Playoff are close to a deal to expand the playoff field to 24 teams in 2027. This news arrives merely two years after the field already expanded from four teams to 12. Not only was this expansion inevitable, but it is unlikely to be the last we see.
For now, we are on the cusp of a 24-team playoff, which comes as ESPN and the CFP have been negotiating a big new deal for the network to continue broadcasting the games. According to ESPN's reporting, this new deal will do away with Power 4 conference championship games and start the season a week earlier. Details are reportedly being finalized, but ESPN describes the current composition for the 24-team field as 19 at-large bids, the Power 4 conference champions "as determined by each league," and the highest-ranked Group of 6 team.
The Big Ten has been a leading proponent for this change, and its commissioner Tony Pettiti pushed back against complaints that further expansion would dilute and devalue the product and the games. He argues that the new system would include "tiered incentives." According to ESPN, seeds 1 through 8 would get a first-round bye, followed by a home game. Teams seeded from 9 through 16 would get a first-round home game, while teams seeded 17 and lower should be vying for a higher ranking, both to stay in competition and to get that first-round home game. Cool.
Though there's been plenty of consternation about how this ruins college football, I actually find that silly. College football has been ruined since the invention of the playoff in the first place; expansion is just a natural byproduct of this new version.
What's much more interesting to me is this: After a year of being sold and hustled about how much college sports, particularly college football, is in danger of becoming something we don't recognize anymore, here comes these same hustlers signing lucrative deals to squeeze even more money out of the sport for everyone but the players, who still do not get paid directly from the schools or make money off these TV contracts. There is a rich and totally depressing harmony in seeing the Protect College Sports Act pass through the Senate while this expansion is happening. The private-equity mentality of infinite growth has been brought into the sport, and like that industry, the windfall from that growth is concentrated to the top one percent. These executives and administrators don't even seem to care that we can all see them extracting as much wealth from the sport as possible, while simultaneously shutting down the potential benefits for anyone else.
But, you know, no more conference championships means that if Miami doesn't win one this year, we can end up with a Miami program that never once won the ACC. I think that would be pretty funny.
