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College football’s long national nightmare is over.

The playoffs are expanding—probably soon.

The College Football Playoff Board on Friday approved a 12-team expansion, ending a three-plus-year effort and making the postseason the most significant change in college football history.

in a secret meeting prior to a report from sports illustrated On Wednesday, the 11-member CFP Board of Directors, made up of 10 FBS councils and the respective presidents of Notre Dame Cathedral, unanimously approved the 12-team format and decided to implement it by 2026 at the latest. did, a source told SI. Totally unexpected a week ago, the decision was made by the Management Committee, his corresponding CFP’s Conference Commissioners’ Group, and Jack Swarbrick of Notre Dame AD, who had failed to come to an agreement on the expansion format, over extending the playoffs. It ended his year-long stalemate.

In light of the Commissioner’s futile attempts, the President has become more involved in the matter, and after spending the past few months debating a playoff model, for the first time in over a year, unanimity seemed possible recently. has reached a tipping point. Mississippi President and CFP Board Chairman Mark Keenum led an aggressive push to reach a decision on Friday. Told. The ACC, Big Ten and Pac-12 voted against the expansion just six months ago, but this time they’ve changed course.

The 12-team format is the same model proposed 15 months ago by the three commissioners and Swarbrick. The four were part of his CFP working group, which spent two years drafting the extension.

This model allows the 6 highest-ranked conference champions to auto-bid, gives the 4 highest-ranked champions a first-round bye, and completes the field with a 6-man massive selection. First round matches for the 5th through 12th seeds will be played on campus or at a location designated by the better seed. The quarterfinals and semifinals will be held in a six-bowl rotation. For model details, see see here.

“Regarding 2024 and 2025, if the current six bowls want to participate, we will,” CFP Executive Director Bill Hancock said on a conference call with reporters. “For ’26 and beyond, it’s not yet decided what the specs will be. I think most expectations are that it will be the same six bowl games, but that will depend on how they react to the specs.

“Regarding other bowl games, the bowl system remains strong and continues to be an opportunity for student-athletes to finish the season in a great environment. no game.”

A unanimous vote was required to change the composition of the CFP before his current contract with ESPN expired after the 2025 playoffs. That said, this decision does not mean that early expansion is guaranteed. The 2025 season is a more reasonable start date, but officials are expected to work towards 2024, the earliest the playoffs could be extended.

There are logistical hurdles. The current run of 3 games (semifinals + championship) is 11 games, almost quadrupling in size, with a lead time of only 27 months. The original deadline for early expansion was nine months ago.

The CFP recently announced the dates and locations of the championship games for the 2024 and 2025 seasons, Atlanta and Miami respectively. In an expanded playoff model, the championship game will be postponed by at least a week to mid-January. New sites and new dates may be required.

Hancock, his staff, and the Commissioner are tasked with finalizing the details of the expansion format and determining the year the new playoffs will begin.

One of their pressing issues concerns ESPN. The network owns the rights to the 2024 and 2025 playoffs, a problem for many commissioners who want multiple networks to retain their rights. ESPN has indicated its willingness to compromise, but the nature of these negotiations is unclear.

The Commissioner and Swarbrick are scheduled to meet in Dallas next week at a previously scheduled gathering. UCLA and USC join the Big Ten. Recruitment of Big 12 Commissioner Brett Yeomark. The group plans to try to compromise on some outstanding hurdles, including the media rights part with ESPN. How revenue will be distributed in extended playoffs. The Rose Bowl role has been a sticking point in negotiations over the past year.

“(Next week) is the beginning of the implementation process,” said Hancock. “I think 2024 and he will identify what needs to be done in 2025 as well as identifying the necessary steps to implement in 2026. There is a lot of work to be done.”

Hancock won’t “handicap” its potential to expand by 2026, with Keenum pointing to a number of “logistical issues.”

That said, his “hope” is that the playoffs can take place “as soon as possible.”

The implications of the widened playoffs are far-reaching, especially when they occur two years later. The expansion is expected to generate a combined $450 million in additional revenue in 2024 and 2025, some of which could go to athlete benefits such as healthcare and family travel. But will players be brought in to share some of this additional revenue?

“We are clearly doing something for our players,” Hancock said in a separate conference call with reporters after the official announcement on Friday. Players can certainly get some really great opportunities to get memorabilia from the game, but is there more? We just haven’t dug deep enough.”

This two-year expansion offers a total of 16 new opportunities for sports that have struggled to establish parity. The playoff era is marked by a parade of the same teams in the same league advancing to the postseason.

For example, in the eight-year CFP era, six teams accounted for 25 of the 32 playoff spots (78%). Last year, three of the five Power Conferences failed to make the playoffs. This is his second time in his eight years at CFP. Together, the Pac-12 and Big 12 made it to eight playoffs. This is the same number as the Big Ten. The SEC has certified 10 and the ACC has certified 8.

The expansion won’t solve decades-old parity problems in the sport, but it’s at least expected to create more important late-season matchups for more programs. As many as 30 teams may still be alive to make the field.

Former Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlesby, who helped create the 12-team model, said in January, “It would be better for college football as a whole if there were more mixed teams.” It doesn’t have to be, it reduces interest in the event nationally.”

The college football postseason will more closely mirror other NCAA sports. Only about 3% of college football teams participate in the four-team playoffs. Most NCAA postseason fields, including basketball, baseball, and softball, include at least 10% of all teams in the sport.

Another impact of expansion: meeting scheduling. Several leagues are in the process of determining future league schedule formats, most notably the SEC.

When Texas and Oklahoma enter in 2024 or 2025, SEC athletic directors are divided on whether to stay at eight games or move to nine. A 12-team playoff paves the way for the team to move forward even if he loses two to three games, further motivating the SEC’s athletic director to move to the conference nine games.

In a way, despite the SEC’s dominance in the current model, they are leading the charge for expansion. The league has qualified at least one team in 15 of its last 16 title matches, won 12 of them, and has sent 18 teams to its last 16 championship games.

That said, in January 2019, Keenum directed the commissioner to create an extended model. The Commissioner’s sub-section has taken him two years and more than 60 models, which he narrowed down to one 12-team format, which he launched last summer. What many believed to be a swift passage turned out to be 10 months of negotiations involving public thorns, hurt feelings and ultimately an 8-3 vote failure in February. It turned out.

This was yet another college football postseason failure, and the fifth failure in the past 45 years. In 1976, two-team and four-team playoff models were shot down. In 1988, the NCAA members outright defeated the championship game proposal, and in 1994 the president rejected his eight-team model. In a recent attempt, he beat four-team models in a 2008 ballot before the Commissioner approved him four years later.

So why did it take so long to come to consensus on a move so clearly needed this time around?

First, the expansion was originally supposed to be discussed and approved in 2020, but the COVID-19 pandemic delayed negotiations for a year, at which point two new Power 5 commissioners, ACC’s Jim Phillips and Pac- 12 George Kliavkoff have arrived. They challenged the subcommittee’s process of arriving at the 12-team model. The SEC’s acquisitions of Oklahoma and Texas further soured relations and complicated negotiations.

Among them, Pac-12, Big Ten, and ACC formed an alliance. Each commissioner had public and private reasons for voting against the format. Both Big Ten and ACC have expressed interest in automatically qualifying each of the Power 5 champions. Before voting to expand, the ACC also wanted to resolve the myriad off-field issues surrounding college football, particularly his 365-day football calendar. The Pac-12 problem wasn’t the actual format, it was something else. They ranged from revenue-sharing models to the incorporation of the Rose Bowl, which wanted to keep its traditional date and time.

Since then, the three leagues appear to have eased their positions, which could be the result of a variety of circumstances. For one thing, the Alliance, which was torpedoed by Big His Ten’s acquisition of his USC and UCLA this summer, isn’t expected to survive in its original form. Second, the Big Ten are currently completing a multi-billion dollar TV deal.

Meanwhile, the ACC, which is now leading months of research into creating a new 365-day soccer calendar, could solve its biggest expansion problem. In the West, Pac-12 needs more expansion than any other major conference. They have not qualified for the four-team playoffs since 2016.

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