ACC commish: ‘Lot of push’ to expand CFP in ’24
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — ACC commissioner Jim Phillips told ESPN on Wednesday that “there’s a lot of push” to expand the College Football Playoff in 2024.
The CFP’s board of managers voted in early September to expand the playoff to 12 teams in 2026, but the 10 FBS commissioners and Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick have been working toward expansion two years sooner.
“We’re trying. We’re committed to doing it,” Phillips told ESPN at ACC basketball media day. “We really are, across 10 conferences and Notre Dame. We feel really good about the work that’s been done across all 10 conferences and Notre Dame these last five, six months. We’re really unified in trying to get it done. It’s just the logistics of this thing are difficult. Not insurmountable, but time is not a friend of ours right now. Time is not on our side.
“There’s a lot of push to try to get this thing done.”
Phillips also said “it’s time to look at” expanding the NCAA basketball tournaments. SEC commissioner Greg Sankey opened the conversation in August, telling Sports Illustrated he was willing to take a “fresh look” at the tournament.
Since then, the debate has intensified in the sport, although it seems any potential change is barely in the exploratory stage.
“It’s the crown jewel of all of our championships,” Phillips told ESPN. “There’s nothing that really duplicates it, on both sides, on the men’s side and the women’s side. So you have to be respectful of not messing it up, either, and understand it’s in a really good, healthy place. But you also have to continue to be progressive, and I try to think about those things in that way.
“I’m a believer that the [automatic qualifiers] and winning a championship matters. It should matter. I’m not interested in reducing the AQs. I’m just not. But I’m also committed to making sure those that deserve to get into a tournament should. … You’re trying to balance the access across Division I. Making sure the AQs remain there for conferences. They need that. They need that for the financial piece of it, they need it for the emotional piece of it, to be part of it, etc. But you also have a group that at the highest level is clamoring for more access for their teams. That just leads itself to discussion of, we need to take a holistic perspective and review of college basketball and the tournament.”
Phillips said the logistics of such an expansion — the calendar, the format, the financial aspect of it — haven’t been figured out yet, but there’s an interest in exploring it.
“More access, more opportunity for more young men and women,” he said. “There’s a lot of positives to that.”
ACC coaches were split on whether to expand the NCAA tournaments. Miami’s Jim Larranaga and Syracuse’s Jim Boeheim were in favor, with each having his own preferred format.
Larranaga would like to see all 32 conference champions receive byes, while 64 at-large teams play in the first round.
“I’ve been a proponent of expanding the NCAA tournament for a long time,” he said. “If you look at the mission of college basketball, the NCAA tournament is the culmination of every player’s dream. But if you look at the history, it’s always the same teams with a few exceptions. So expanding the tournament to 96, it really should have gone from 64 to 96.”
Boeheim would like to see the First Four in Dayton be expanded to every first-round site, which would allow the tournament to still fall within its typical three-week window.
“I advocated this 25 years ago,” he said. “There’s three times more good [programs] than when we had 48 teams in the tournament. Putting money in, good schools. It’s not a hard expansion. The argument I’ve heard is that it dilutes the tournament, which is nonsense. It actually makes the tournament better. … You have better teams in the tournament than you would before.”
Virginia’s Tony Bennett likes it the way it is but wouldn’t be opposed to minor expansion.
“I think the NCAA tournament is arguably the best, from start to finish, the best sporting event going,” Bennett said. “I don’t want to lose what we have. If we have a little bit of expansion and it doesn’t take away and it’s not a major shift, I’d be for that. I would protect what we have, and if there’s little adjustments, a few more here and there, I’d be for that, but not a major overhaul.”
Virginia Tech’s Mike Young would opt for the status quo.
“I’m a purist,” Young said. “I don’t like it. … Why would we dabble with something that’s been so successful, that’s been so unique to the world of athletics, that is enjoying enormous popularity and has forever and ever?”
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Adam Rittenberg
While Dabo Swinney isn’t inflating LSU‘s grade for beating his team in Saturday’s season opener, Brian Kelly is ready to give the Clemson coach an incomplete for his evaluation.
Both coaches weighed in Tuesday on how LSU’s 17-10 win at Clemson should be viewed. After trailing 10-3 at halftime, LSU outscored Clemson 14-0 in the second half and finished with significant edges in both total yards (354-261) and first downs (25-13).
LSU rose six spots to No. 3 in the AP Top 25 poll Tuesday, while Clemson dropped four spots to No. 8.
“It was a helluva game, down to the last play,” Swinney said in his weekly news conference. “Right out of the gate. It’s like getting the final exam [on] Day 1 of class. They made a 65; we made a 58. Neither one of us were great.”
Kelly had not won a season opener at LSU before Saturday, and the victory was his first with the Tigers against an AP top-5 opponent.
“I thought we dominated them in the second half, so he’s really a really good grader for giving himself a 58, or he’s a really hard grader on us,” Kelly said in his news conference when told about Swinney’s comment.
“Or he didn’t see the second half, which, that might be the case. He might not have wanted to see the second half.”
Kelly added that LSU is moving on to this week’s game against Louisiana Tech.
“Clemson is a darn good football team,” Kelly said. “That’s a top-notch team, and they’re going to be a team in the hunt for [the] playoff picture. We hope we are, too. But it was only one game. So I don’t know if he’s a hard grader or an easy grader, but I like the way that we played in the second half.”
Clemson visits LSU to open the 2026 season.
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Eli Lederman
Oklahoma coach Brent Venables said Bryce Underwood “looks to be wise beyond his years” and compared Michigan‘s freshman quarterback to former Clemson national championship QB Trevor Lawrence on Tuesday ahead of the No. 18 Sooners’ Week 2 visit from the No. 15 Wolverines.
Underwood, ESPN’s No. 1 overall recruit in the 2025 class, will make his second career start at Oklahoma on Saturday (7:30 p.m. ET, ABC).
The coveted freshman earned Michigan’s starting job at the end of fall camp, beating out a collection of experienced passers on the depth chart including offseason portal additions Mikey Keene (Fresno State) and Jake Garcia (East Carolina). Underwood delivered a smooth college debut against New Mexico in Week 1, completing 21 of 31 passes for 251 yards and a touchdown in Michigan’s 34-17 win.
At Oklahoma, Underwood is set to face a much stiffer challenge against Venables, who resumed control of the Sooners’ defensive playcalling ahead of the 2024 season, and an experienced defense that held Illinois State to 151 yards of total offense in Week 1.
The former Clemson defensive coordinator compared Underwood to Lawrence, the five-star quarterback prospect who started as a freshman in 2018 and led the Tigers to a national championship win over Alabama.
“He’s a little different,” Venables said of Underwood. “It reminds me a lot of a Trevor Lawrence. Quick. Decisive. Accurate. Poised. Tough. Consistent. There’s a reason he was the No. 1 player in America. And he’s got a maturity and a work ethic and leadership agility to go along with that.”
As Oklahoma seeks to rebound from a 6-7 finish last fall, a new-look Sooners offense will get a test of its own Saturday.
Behind transfer QB John Mateer and first-year offensive coordinator Ben Arbuckle, Oklahoma gained 495 yards of offense in its 35-3, season-opening win over Illinois State. Mateer, who arrived in the offseason from Washington State alongside Arbuckle, passed Baker Mayfield for the most passing yards by an Oklahoma QB in a debut with 392 yards.
On Tuesday, Venables highlighted the Wolverines’ experience on defense, particularly in the front seven, as a defining challenge for the Sooners in an intriguing Week 2 matchup between two of college football’s most storied brands.
“[It’s] a defense that for the last several years has been one of the gold standards of college football when it comes to playing good defense,” Venables said. “It’s going to be a great physical matchup, and for us, a great litmus test to where we’re at.”
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