EXCLUSIVE CONTENT
Inside the tumultuous summer of College Football Playoff expansion
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Heather DinichESPN Senior Writer
Last week, he told him to take the day off.
The 11 university presidents and chancellors who comprise the College Football Playoff's board of managers -- the only people with the authority to change the playoff -- are no longer coming here, postponing a vote on a proposal to expand the playoff from four to 12 teams.
So how did we get from a widely celebrated announcement in June to another closed-door meeting with no timetable for a resolution in sight? It's a story that, like most in college football, involves TV money, power and mistrust. And in many ways, it all began with the announcement that Oklahoma and Texas would be headed to the SEC.
The possibility of a vote had fizzled throughout a tumultuous summer filled with seismic changes. While CFP executive director Bill Hancock and others urged patience from the beginning, one high-ranking Power 5 source involved in the process told ESPN he believed a vote Tuesday in favor of 12 teams would occur right up until the decision of Big 12 co-founders Oklahoma and Texas to eventually join the SEC.
"With conference realignment, people start to get a little nervous," the source said. "You get a lack of trust, nobody knows the future, there's uncertainty."
In late August, West Virginia University president Gordon Gee -- a member of the CFP board of managers -- cited that uncertainty in his decision to vote against expansion, telling West Virginia's student newspaper he had changed his mind about supporting the plan. The board has to unanimously approve any changes to the format, so Gee's vote alone would be enough to derail it.
"I have one of the votes, and I think it nearly needs to be unanimous and I'm not voting for it," said Gee, who declined comment for this story. "It's one of those ideas that I think was very good when there was stability. When there's instability, the idea becomes less appropriate."
That doesn't mean this summer will prevent expansion. Across the sport, including among the commissioners and presidents, there remains an appetite for growing the playoff. And a sense that it ultimately will get done.
"I have absolutely no doubt the playoff will expand," Notre Dame AD Jack Swarbrick said. "When it will expand, and what the exact format will be, I don't know. But they will expand."
To figure out how they'll get there, ESPN spoke to commissioners, presidents and power brokers about the state of playoff expansion, why it's taking longer than some expected and what needs to happen next to make it a reality.
Would a 12-team format help break the hold that a handful of programs, led by Nick Saban's Alabama Crimson Tide, have had on the College Football Playoff? Phil Ellsworth/ESPN Images
How we got here
On June 10, the CFP invigorated the entire sport with its announcement that it would consider a 12-team playoff model, but the news release came with a caveat that was literally in big, bold type: "The first step in a long process."It may as well have been written in invisible ink.
After seven seasons in which Alabama, Clemson, Ohio State and Oklahoma have accounted for 20 of the 28 playoff slots, media, players, fans and coaches have been clamoring for a more inclusive system and were hoping for a swift approval of it.
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On June 22, following an in-person meeting in Dallas, the possibility of an expanded field cleared a major hurdle when the CFP board of managers gave the commissioners the green light to use this past summer to explore the feasibility of the format and solicit feedback from their constituents on campus.
Not everyone was on board.
"Our team isn't for it," Clemson coach Dabo Swinney said at the time. "They don't want to play more games. And to be honest with you, I don't know if there's 12 teams good enough."
North Carolina coach Mack Brown said his players preferred a six- or eight-team model -- scenarios which continue to be discussed but don't seem to be gaining much traction. The honest feedback is part of the process, but it's only a fraction of what landed on the commissioners' desks this summer.
Since the commissioners and presidents last met, the SEC has positioned itself to become the first 16-team superconference; the Big Ten, Pac-12 and ACC have formed a partnership many outside those leagues are still struggling to define; and the Big 12 has made itself whole again by announcing it will add Houston, Cincinnati, UCF and BYU. Collectively, those events triggered a heightened sense of mistrust amongst college football's top decision-makers, but how much all of it has impacted their CFP discussions depends on who you ask and what conference they represent.
Perhaps no move was more divisive than the Texas-and-Oklahoma-to-the-SEC bombshell. It frayed relations between SEC commissioner Greg Sankey and Big 12 boss Bob Bowlsby -- two of the four men who worked closely together for two years to develop the 12-team model. It also brought the rest of the Power 5 together. On Aug. 24, two days before Gee said publicly he wouldn't vote for expansion, the ACC, Big Ten and Pac-12 formed an "alliance" that seemed more than anything a way to consolidate a counterbalance to the SEC's superpower status. It was also an unwritten agreement that those three leagues wouldn't try to poach each other's teams in an effort to create some stability.
Big Ten commissioner Kevin Warren is only in his second year, and two of the other major voices in the room -- Pac-12 commissioner George Kliavkoff and ACC commissioner Jim Phillips -- haven't even been on the job a full year. Kliavkoff started on July 1, and Phillips began in February.
While conference realignment and new personalities have all factored into the process, one of the biggest obstacles at the heart of expediting playoff expansion revolves around TV contracts.
The playoff is entering the eighth season of a 12-year exclusive contract with ESPN that runs through the 2025 season. So if the playoff format were to change before then, ESPN would have first rights to any new games. If college football's power brokers are determined to take the playoff to multiple media entities as a way of maximizing revenue, it would need to wait until after 2025 or work out an arrangement with ESPN.
"In last week's meeting, it became clear for the first time that all 11 members of the management committee now believe we have to have multiple distributors of our postseason content," another source with knowledge of the discussions said.
Other factors persist that existed prior to realignment news. There are health questions about athletes playing up to 17 games and discussions over whether to play the games on home fields or neutral sites. Another hurdle is the calendar, as postseason games conflict with academic schedules and final exams. Questions surround how the major bowls will be impacted, particularly the Rose Bowl, which wants to maintain its current media rights deal and its traditional Jan. 1 time slot.
"It takes time to digest this to work through the details," Mid-American Conference commissioner Jon Steinbrecher said. "And there's lots and lots of layers. And, you know, every conference comes at this with a little different take on it and has different issues that they have to manage. And the challenge and the beauty of this is a collaborative agreement, you got 10 conferences and Notre Dame that we have to get everybody on the same page. It doesn't happen overnight."
Even without an official vote on Tuesday from the presidents and chancellors empowered to make it happen, multiple decision-makers have told ESPN expansion is inevitable, and the process that began in June is playing out as expected -- with plenty of questions to be answered.
Are there any regrets about releasing the potential 12-team format before everyone agreed to it?
"No, because it was only a proposal," Hancock said.
Mountain West Conference commissioner Craig Thompson, one of the four men on the CFP's working group who developed the proposal along with Sankey, Bowlsby and Swarbrick, agreed.
"I still think it's on time," Thompson said. "This was the process as we outlined what we were going to do is, is simply look at this, and then take a 90-day period to dissect it, break it up.
"I've read the comments of people are saying it was released too soon. No, it was released when it was supposed to be released. And this is exactly the way it was envisioned, that everybody take it back to the conference, talk to a whole host of people, and come back with your issues, concerns, suggestions for changes, and you know that's exactly where we're at now. I don't think that the meeting in Dallas [last week] was any momentum breaker. It's simply, we need more time."
Bowlsby declined comment for this story, but based on interviews throughout the summer and in recent days, the commissioners involved -- including Sankey and Bowlsby -- have expressed a willingness to put aside the politics and hurt feelings in order to work together to find a solution for the postseason.
"I have been in the room for 30 years watching these changes and [it] certainly does affect relationships, but I'm fully prepared to work with my colleagues. I'm certainly hopeful that they will be of the same mindset," Sankey told ESPN in a recent interview. "Certainly [realignment] creates dynamics, hopefully for a short period of time, that alter relationships, but we all have a responsibility to work collaboratively moving forward. And I've seen that happen before and I'm certainly committed to making certain that that can happen again."
It sounds like it already is.
Bill Hancock, the executive director of the College Football Playoff, is not concerned that potential expansion may take longer to approve than some initially thought. AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez, File
What comes next?
Swarbrick said last Wednesday's in-person meeting in Dallas "was a great meeting, one of the best we've had," but added there are enough lingering issues that the commissioners weren't ready to present a recommendation yet to the presidents for approval."I think we can continue to keep them informed and they'll decide when they're prepared to vote," Swarbrick said. "It's ultimately their decision. We thought there remained some issues to be addressed and it would be important for us to address them before we make a recommendation or ask them to act."
The current proposal does not include guarantees for conference champions. Instead, it calls for the bracket to include the six highest-ranked conference champions, plus the six highest-ranked other teams as determined by the CFP's selection committee. There would be no limit on the number of participants from a conference, and no league would qualify automatically.
Some commissioners are still hoping for greater consideration for an eight-team format, but sources indicate the SEC and Notre Dame wouldn't vote for an eight-team field with automatic qualifiers. Meanwhile, the Group of 5 leaders wouldn't support a plan that doesn't guarantee access for at least their highest-ranked conference champion.
Sources also say the conversations are still trending toward ultimately coming to a consensus on a 12-team format -- the most likely alternative would be staying at four, not expanding to eight -- but the time frame for actually approving it ranges anywhere between months to about two years, depending on when they decide they want to do it.
Technically, the earliest the playoff could expand is 2023, but sources say 2024 is more realistic -- and even that would require a monumental compromise on TV rights.
"Where I'm sitting, there is not an issue in front of us that there are not solutions to," Steinbrecher said, "as long as we're willing to be creative and work with each other."
The commissioners and Swarbrick all have to agree before they can expect the presidents to, and they'll attempt to get one step closer to that when they meet in-person in Chicago on Tuesday, albeit without the presidents. The next scheduled in-person meeting for the CFP's board of managers is currently in January, when they gather annually at the national championship game -- but Mississippi State president Mark Keenum, the chair of the group, said they could call a special meeting if the commissioners can come to a consensus on a new format before then.
"My hope is that we as the presidents and chancellors can come together before the end of this year to hopefully ratify a new plan for college football going forward," Keenum told ESPN. "If all 10 commissioners and the Notre Dame AD can have unanimity on a new plan, I'd love to come together in person and ratify it, but hey, if we use technology, that's fine, too. My hope is we can come together prior to our January meeting as a board to determine where we're headed."
They know where they're going. They just need to agree on how to get there.
