CFP: No format changes until ACC ‘dust settles’
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Heather Dinich, ESPN Senior Writer
IRVING, Texas — For the first time since the Pac-12 was gutted by realignment, the 10 FBS commissioners and Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick met Wednesday to discuss the future of the College Football Playoff in a meeting that was described as “cordial,” but with a backdrop of uncertainty still looming over the league leaders.
If the Pac-12 dissolves in 2024, as many expect it to, the CFP could change how it chooses the teams in the expanded 12-team format, which also begins in 2024. The current model includes the six highest-ranked conference champions plus the next six highest-ranked teams, which allows for five Power 5 conference champions, plus one Group of 5 champ. If the Pac-12 doesn’t exist, though, the CFP is considering changing the criteria to the five highest-ranked conference champions, plus the next seven highest-ranked teams. The group also discussed the option of 12 at-large teams.
No major decisions were made Wednesday, though, because the group is still waiting to see what happens to the four remaining Pac-12 teams — Cal, Stanford, Washington State and Oregon State. The ACC is expected to decide soon on potentially adding Cal, Stanford and SMU.
ACC commissioner Jim Phillips was expected to join them in person but told ESPN he didn’t because of travel issues in Charlotte, North Carolina, caused by Hurricane Idalia. He participated in the five-hour meeting by videoconference and didn’t provide the room any update on possible conference expansion, according to CFP executive director Bill Hancock.
“To the matter of conference realignment, we’re going to have to wait and see,” Hancock said. “We’re going to have to wait until the dust settles before making any decisions about how that might affect CFP. The fact is, we just don’t know yet. No one knows how conference realignment is going to wind up, and it would just be premature to make any decisions about it.”
American Athletic Conference commissioner Mike Aresco said his conference should know “fairly soon” if SMU is going to join the ACC, and that his league has “contingency plans.”
“We’re weighing how we’re going to deal with that,” he said. “We had a major meeting today with our ADs and presidents this morning. … It’ll get resolved pretty quickly. I don’t think it can go on too much longer. None of this is really healthy when it drags on, but we have a great relationship with SMU.”
Aresco said the Power 5 label is “all about branding.”
“When we heard Stanford and Cal have no place to go, well, that’s not true,” he said, “They had a place to go. They weren’t orphans. It’s the idea there’s this desperation now because of the P5 branding. … I understand the issue of money, it’s based on TV deal, but guys are willing to go for virtually nothing because they feel they need that branding. We’re seeing that play out now.”
Regardless what happens with realignment, Mid-American Conference commissioner Jon Steinbrecher said that moving forward, the principle of honoring conference champions should remain important.
“I think that’s a bedrock principle of what we are doing and what we’ve built into this,” he said. “I think it’s important that that is continued as we move forward. Depending on number of conferences we have, I think you can have a legitimate conversations about the number of champions that are set here, as well as the number of at-larges, but to me you start with the bedrock principle and I think it’s important we keep that in there. I felt good coming out of that conversation. Didn’t take any sort of hands, I just felt good about that conversation.”
It was the first time Pac-12 commissioner George Kliavkoff was in the same room with his peers since Oregon and Washington decided to join USC and UCLA in the Big Ten, and Arizona, Arizona State, Utah and Colorado chose to join the Big 12. Kliavkoff has not spoken publicly since and declined to comment about realignment as he hurried past reporters in a meeting room lobby at the DFW Grand Hyatt.
As he walked briskly away, Kliavkoff smiled and said “it was good” to be in the room again with everybody and “nice to focus on everything in the future.”
When asked what his future is, Kliavkoff said, “I’m focused on this year. I’m just focused on us winning a national championship.”
Wednesday’s meeting was previously scheduled for the CFP’s management committee to dig into the nitty-gritty details associated with expanding the field to 12 teams in time for next season. While recent conference realignment obviously added another level to discussions, the focus remained on logistics. The group decided to continue to provide a $3,000 stipend for each of 125 players’ families to travel to all of the games in the playoff. They are also moving forward with a company to help manage lodging on all of the campuses for the first-round games.
“This meeting was set months ago because every one of us knows that to go to 12 teams in ’24, we’ve got a lot of work to do,” said SEC commissioner Greg Sankey, who ran the meeting. “That’s what we did. … Did we talk about things have changed around us? Sure. Did that dominate the meeting? I don’t think it did. Everybody was friendly. It’s not the first time we’ve been through conference changes.”
While starting the season in Week Zero has been a topic of discussion in the past, it has yet to garner much traction, and wasn’t discussed Wednesday. But having recently returned from Dublin, Ireland, where Notre Dame kicked off the season against Navy in Week 0, Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick was candid in his support for the idea of it in the future, saying he thinks Week 0 is “really good for the sport.”
“I understand the difficulties, but at a minimum, it always creates a two-bye year, and that’s good for the health of the student-athletes,” Swarbrick said. “Right now, we get a two-year bye every seven years. … If you’re around the locker room, and you see what they’re like by Game 9, 10, a second bye’s so helpful.”
The CFP’s management committee will meet again in September at the Big Ten’s headquarters in Rosemont, Illinois, and is hoping to have more answers in place about realignment by then.
“I think we have to have some clarity, and we don’t have full clarity right now,” Sankey said. “… I want to see what the circumstances are at some point.”
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Heather Dinich, Senior College Football Insider
ATLANTA — No major decisions were made regarding the future format of the 12-team College Football Playoff on Sunday, but “tweaks” to the 2025 season haven’t been ruled out, CFP executive director Rich Clark said.
Sunday’s annual meeting of the FBS commissioners and the presidents and chancellors who control the playoff wasn’t expected to produce any immediate course of action, but it was the first time that people with the power to change the playoff met in person to begin a review of the historic expanded bracket.
Clark said the group talked about “a lot of really important issues,” but the meeting at the Signia by Hilton set the stage for bigger decisions that need to be made “very soon.”
Commissioners would have to unanimously agree upon any changes to the 12-team format to implement them for the 2025 season.
“I would say it’s possible, but I don’t know if it’s going to happen or not,” Clark said on the eve of the College Football Playoff National Championship game between Ohio State and Notre Dame. “There’s probably some things that could happen in short order that might be tweaks to the 2025 season, but we haven’t determined that yet.”
A source with knowledge of the conversations said nobody at this time was pushing hard for a 14-team bracket, and there wasn’t an in-depth discussion of the seeding process, but talks were held about the value of having the four highest-ranked conference champions earn first-round byes.
Ultimately, the 11 presidents and chancellors who comprise the CFP’s board of managers will vote on any changes, and some university leaders said they liked rewarding those conference champions with byes because of the emphasis it placed on conference title games.
Mississippi State president Mark Keenum, the chair of the board of managers, said they didn’t talk about “what-ifs,” but they have tasked the commissioners to produce a plan for future governance and the format for 2026 and beyond.
Starting in 2026, any changes will no longer require unanimous approval, and the Big Ten and the SEC will have the bulk of control over the format — a power that was granted during the past CFP contract negotiation. The commissioners will again meet in person at their annual April meeting in Las Colinas, Texas, and the presidents and chancellors will have a videoconference or phone call on May 6.
“We’re extremely happy with where we are now,” Keenum said. “We’re looking towards the new contract, which is already in place with ESPN, our media provider, for the next six years through 2032. We’ve got to make that transition from the current structure that we’re in to the new structure we’ll have.”
Following Sunday’s meeting, sources continued to express skepticism that there will be unanimous agreement to make any significant changes for the 2025 season, but a more thorough review will continue in the following months.
“The commissioners and our athletic director from Notre Dame will look at everything across the board,” Clark said. “We’re going to tee them up so that they could really have a thorough look at the playoff looking back after this championship game is done … and then look back and figure out what is it that we need.”
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Andrea Adelson, ESPN Senior Writer
ATLANTA — ACC commissioner Jim Phillips said Sunday that the league will have conversations among coaches and athletic directors about whether to make changes to its conference championship game format.
The conversations are a result of the expanded 12-team College Football Playoff, and ensuring conference champions and the teams that play in conference championship game remain important.
This past season, SMU entered the ACC championship game as the regular-season champion but lost to Clemson in the ACC title game and had to sweat it out before selection day before earning a spot in the 12-team field.
Phillips said the ACC could consider giving its regular-season champion a bye, and have the teams that finish second or third in the league standings play in the ACC championship game.
He said another possibility is having the top 4 teams play on the final weekend of the regular season: first place versus fourth place, and second place vs. third place, with the winners playing the following weekend in the ACC championship game.
Phillips said he will have conversations with league head coaches on a conference call next week to get their feedback on the plan — specifically pointing to comments SMU coach Rhett Lashlee made leading up to the game in which he indicated the Mustangs might be better off not playing to protect its spot in the field.
Phillips also said these conversations will continue at the league’s winter meetings next month in Charlotte, North Carolina, and he has mentioned this is a topic among league athletics directors.
“The conference championship games are important, as long as we make them important, right?” Phillips said. “Do you play two versus three? You go through the regular season and whoever wins the regular season, just park them to the side, and then you play the second-place team versus the third-place team in your championship game. So you have a regular-season champion, and then you have a conference tournament or postseason champion.
“That’s one of the options, depending on how you treat the conference champions, or that championship game, you may want to do it different.
“I have alluded to that in some of our every-other-week-AD calls, and these are some of the things moving forward. We want to have a recap of the regular season, postseason, and what do we think moving forward?”
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