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BRUCE BOCHY SPEAKS in a low rumble, walks like his shoes are three sizes too small and prefers to talk about anything but himself. He manages a baseball game as if there are actual human beings on the field and not just a collection of numbers designed to dictate all outcomes, big and small. He is 68 years old and back for another run at glory that, if successful, he will refuse to accept credit for helping to create.

His Texas Rangers players swear by him, going so far as to believe he possesses a magical sense of time and place when it comes to postseason baseball. His history is certainly a faxctor: Bochy managed the San Francisco Giants to three World Series championships in the 2010s despite never having anything close to the best roster. He won as a division champion and a wild card. He sat out three years, pointedly refusing to call his 2019 departure a retirement, before returning this season to oversee a Rangers team that held first place in the American League West for 159 days but ended up on the road as the AL’s second wild-card team. The Rangers rinsed away that disappointment by dispatching the Rays in two games notable for what they didn’t have: fans and drama.

The Rangers have difficulty explaining what makes Bochy so different. It’s instructive that one common theme is to extol his penchant for doing as little as possible. He sends out nearly the same lineup for every game, and he stays out of its way unless circumstances demand otherwise. The team believes his consistency and experience are precisely what it needs to navigate a challenging course.

“Honestly, I’ve talked to him probably three times since I’ve been here,” says starting pitcher Jordan Montgomery, who came to Texas in a deadline trade with the Yankees. “But that’s the greatness of Boch. He smiles at you, says, ‘Hey, how ya doing? How’s the family?’ and that’s it.”

Bochy emanates what might be described as radical calm. During batting practice, he leans against the cage with a fungo bat tucked under his left armpit, dropping his head every minute or so to send a line of spit to the dirt at his feet. He can go an entire session without saying anything, just observing, looming over the scene.

He watches games in much the same way, his arms folded on the rail toward the middle of the dugout. He talks to pitching coach Mike Maddux when the need arises, but he mostly keeps to himself. When a Ranger hits a home run, he inches his way closer to the dugout stairs, claps three times and extends his right hand for the celebrant to slap. There’s something to be said for consistency.

“We know one thing,” reserve outfielder Travis Jankowski says. “No matter what happens in [the postseason], Boch won’t be surprised by it.”

Jankowski enjoys telling Bochy stories, and he says he always starts with the one about the left-handed pitchers. Jankowski is a left-handed hitter, and he has always been a part-time player because he has never proved he can hit lefties. Jankowski has played in analytics-heavy organizations, and before this year he hadn’t been in the lineup against a left-handed starter since 2018. There are reasons, starting with Jankowski’s .186 batting average and .493 OPS against lefties in 253 career at-bats.

But that, as Jankowski says, was pre-Bochy, before anyone could look past mere numbers. This May, with shortstop Corey Seager out and backup outfielder Ezequiel Duran moving to short, Jankowski was starting and playing left field against right-handed pitchers. He was hitting over .300 and feeling like he could put a good swing on whatever pitch came his way, from whatever side of the mound it came from.

He showed up to the clubhouse for the second game of a three-game series against the Angels in Anaheim, knowing Reid Detmers was starting, and there it was: his name in a lineup against a lefty for the first time in five seasons.

“That’s when I knew this was different,” Jankowski says. “I was like, OK, this is a guy who’s been there and done that, played the game, managed the game. He knows when you’re seeing the ball well it doesn’t matter: lefty, righty, submariner, 110 or 78, you’re getting a hit. He also understands the opposite: When you’re not swinging well, you can go to a high school field and they’ll get you out.”

Jankowski went 3-for-5 that night, and he says at least part of that — maybe a hit and a half — was because of Bochy’s confidence in him. “I mean, he’s a legend,” Jankowski says, “so it means something when he believes in you.” There are a couple of things at work here in Bochy’s second act as a big league manager: he chose the Rangers when he didn’t have to return to the game — “his bills are paid,” Jankowski says — and, unlike many other managers, his decisions aren’t dictated by anybody in the front office.

“At some point, you have to let your manager do what he wants to do,” catcher/DH Mitch Garver says. “He sees the skill sets, and he’s going to pair them up to the game situation in a way that he sees as necessary. I think that’s something that’s a little lost in today’s game, and so be it — that’s our manager.”

Bochy treats the game like a living organism, something that changes form and requires him to change along with it. He knows baseball is a slow game that can somehow speed up and run away from a manager who doesn’t foresee the moments of acceleration. The idea of managing by feel has become an epithet, synonymous with guessing or simply winging it, but guys like Bochy and Astros manager Dusty Baker treat every game as if it has a physical presence, and maybe their success, and the wild-card failures of managers such as Toronto’s John Schneider and Tampa’s Kevin Cash, signals that feel might be in the midst of a minor comeback.

“He obviously appreciates analytics and uses analytics,” Jankowski says, “but he’s trusting his gut and his baseball instincts. We’re not computers. We’re human beings, and I know guys appreciate and thrive on being treated like one.”

It’s not revelatory in any way to observe that much of baseball is predicated on failure. It’s baked into the game’s processes and psyches in a manner that doesn’t exist in other sports; failure, in a way, is the expected outcome in a majority of the game’s scenarios. It’s such a recurring theme it’s a wonder anyone wants to play.

And because of that, the ability to understand and mitigate failure can be a massive advantage — maybe even a market inefficiency — and it might also be Bochy’s defining quality as a manager.

On Aug. 24 against the Twins, with the Rangers failing their way to a seven-game losing streak, first baseman Nathaniel Lowe rolled over a Pablo Lopez changeup and dribbled the ball between first and second. He was angry with himself, and he ran as hard as he could toward first base, as much out of irritation as professional responsibility. The ball squeaked past first baseman Joey Gallo, and by the time second baseman Kyle Farmer picked it up and threw to Lopez covering first, Lowe was a step past the bag.

It was the saddest of all possible hits, and Lowe remained furious. He jogged back to the dugout after the inning ended, still seething, and noticed Bochy inching toward the steps and leaning toward him, as if he’d just hit a homer.

“That’s a good piece of hittin’ right there,” Bochy grumbled in Lowe’s direction.

Lowe looked at him, saw the glint in his eye and burst out laughing.

“He’s got such a good feel for getting the most out of guys,” Lowe says. “After he says it, I wasn’t even mad anymore. He’s the master of knowing what to say and when to say it.”

The next night against the Twins, with the Rangers failing their way to an eight-game losing streak, starting pitcher Dane Dunning lived a nightmare. He walked four and allowed four earned runs in the first inning. He ended up walking six in a four-inning outing that left him wondering if he should be more embarrassed or angry.

He chose angry, and after he came out of the game he stayed angry. Bochy, a man who hit .239 over nine seasons in the big leagues, approached Dunning in the dugout and said, “Don’t sweat it. S—, even I struck out every once in a while.”

YOU WANT TO know what ballplayers appreciate? Being left to themselves. They’re usually at the ballpark five or six hours before game time, and the clubhouse is like a season-long fraternity house, only cleaner. There’s always a time and place for a good motivational speech from the manager, but that time is rare and the place is almost never the clubhouse.

“I think Boch has been in the clubhouse one time all year,” Jankowski says. He knows the exact date, too: June 4, the night he won his 2,014th career game to move ahead of Walter Alston and into 10th place all-time. “He came in and we did a little toast to him, but even then it seemed like he didn’t feel comfortable in the clubhouse. That’s the old-school mentality: ‘You guys control the clubhouse and I’ll be in my office if you need me.'”

Garver says, “He’s the first to say he’s got no business being in here. This is our space.”

Jankowski’s locker in Seattle is near the entrance of the Rangers’ clubhouse, and on a recent Friday afternoon he stands with his back to the door. After he tells the story of Bochy’s one visit to the clubhouse, I see a large figure turn the corner, take a look inside and walk straight into the clubhouse.

Bochy.

“You’re not going to believe this,” I tell Jankowski quietly, nodding over his shoulder as Bochy strides into the clubhouse. “I think you’ve got your second clubhouse sighting.”

Jankowski’s jaw drops in disbelief. He shakes his head and laughs.

“Yeah, but look at him,” he says as Bochy clears earshot. “Just look at him. He’s so uncomfortable right now. See how uncomfortable he is walking in here?”

And yes, Jankowski is correct: Bochy looks like he’d rather be anywhere else. Head down, moving as quickly as his old catcher’s knees will allow, he finds the staffer he was seeking, says about three words and leaves the same way he came in.

NONE OF WHAT lies ahead figures to be easy. Bochy’s most famous postseason skill, his ability to mix and match a bullpen through three or four innings, always a move ahead of the opposing manager, will be severely tested. He and Maddux oversee one of the worst bullpens in baseball, a group that tied for the most blown saves (13) in the big leagues while running up a 4.77 ERA. It has been a stack of teetering plates, and the Rangers are playing the divisional series against top-seeded Baltimore relying on their third closer of the season, Jose Leclerc, who has had the job for less than a month. Aroldis Chapman, who threw a clean inning in Game 1 against the Rays, is a coin flip at best; his mechanics got so off-kilter that Bochy had to remove him with the bases loaded and nobody out in the ninth inning against Seattle on Sept. 28. That’s feel; Chapman was the closer-designate that night until he wasn’t. Will Smith pitched in the seventh inning of a game the Rangers trailed by eight runs the next night, if you’re wondering whether Bochy has confidence in him.

It was far different in San Francisco, when he could go from Javier Lopez to Sergio Romo to Jeremy Affeldt to Brian Wilson without the constraints of the three-batter minimum.

The best solution to a bad bullpen, of course, is good starting pitching. The Rangers got that against Tampa Bay, with Montgomery throwing seven shutout innings in Game 1 and Nathan Eovaldi giving up one run in 6⅓ in Game 2.

“Yeah,” Jankowski says, waving off any concern about the Texas bullpen. “But he’s borderline genius when it comes to managing a bullpen in the playoffs. He’ll figure it out.”

Maybe. It might take something closer to magic than genius to coax a deep run out of this bullpen, but just maybe. It’s the smallest sample size, but the Rangers clinched a postseason spot with an unlikely 6-1 win over the Mariners. Texas had placed the expected starting pitcher, Jon Gray, on the injured list the day before, leaving Bochy to steer the game through emergency fill-in Andrew Heaney and three relievers. Asked if it felt like a vintage Bochy game, he smiles and says, “Yeah, it kinda did.”

When it was over, he went into the clubhouse for at least the third time this season — the fourth would come four days later in Tampa — to watch his team scream and yell and spray champagne all over the room. “This is what I came back for,” he said as he watched.

He stood there for what seemed like a long time, taking it all in. You couldn’t call him a bystander, but he was definitely not a full participant. His team gave him his space, and he gave them theirs. He was back in his native habitat, happy to see everyone else happy.

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Source: Jays, Santander reach 5-yr., $90M+ deal

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10 hours ago

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January 20, 2025

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Source: Jays, Santander reach 5-yr., M+ deal

Jan 20, 2025, 12:43 PM ET

The Toronto Blue Jays and free agent outfielder Anthony Santander have agreed to a five-year deal that is worth more than $90 million, sources told ESPN’s Jeff Passan on Monday.

The switch-hitting Santander, 30, hit .235 for the Baltimore Orioles in 2024 but set career-highs with 44 home runs, 102 RBIs and 91 runs scored.

He spent his first eight MLB seasons with the Orioles, hitting 155 home runs with a .246 batting average.

MLB Network first reported Santander had reached an agreement with the Blue Jays.

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CFP National Championship: Why everyone at Notre Dame bought into Marcus Freeman

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15 hours ago

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January 20, 2025

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CFP National Championship: Why everyone at Notre Dame bought into Marcus Freeman

  • Paolo Uggetti, ESPNJan 19, 2025, 06:00 PM ET

ATLANTA — Rocco Spindler still remembers the feeling that permeated the air in South Bend, Indiana, during late November in 2021.

The Notre Dame offensive lineman — then a freshman — and his teammates had just finished an 11-1 season only to be hit with the news that their head coach, Brian Kelly, was leaving for LSU while they still had an outside shot at making the College Football Playoff.

“There was a lot of uncertainty that whole week,” Spindler said. “We didn’t know who else was leaving, who else was staying.”

As November turned into December, Spindler and the rest of the team found themselves grasping for any semblance of familiarity or comfort. In Marcus Freeman, they found it.

“He was the one guy we all gravitated toward,” Spindler said of the Irish’s then-first-year defensive coordinator.

Naturally, the players who had seen what Freeman could do, who had been coached by him and felt his impact on their game, viewed the idea of Freeman succeeding Kelly as a no-brainer and campaigned for it.

“It was hectic,” said defensive lineman Howard Cross III. “But immediately everybody was like, ‘Why doesn’t Coach Freeman just be the head coach?’ Everybody agreed.”

“Seeing his ability to lead and how he handles certain situations was all we needed,” said defensive lineman Rylie Mills. “I think we all kind of knew what he was capable of.”

The players’ preference was no secret. Spindler remembers upperclassmen who would not be there the following season expressing their desire for Freeman to take over. It didn’t take long for them to get their wish.

The video of the team’s reaction to Freeman’s hiring immediately became a touchpoint for the program’s decision. It wasn’t about hiring anyone connected to Notre Dame. As the caption “player’s coach” alongside the footage of Freeman being mobbed by his players showed, the decision had the potential to start a new era for the program.

“It was absolutely risky to hire somebody at a place like Notre Dame who doesn’t have a track record as a head coach, but he won the job,” former Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick, who hired Freeman, told ESPN. “We had plenty of really attractive candidates, but based on my experience with him, based on what the players told me, and based on a really excellent interview, he distinguished himself.”

In the three years since that moment, Freeman has built on that foundation, showing himself not only to be the right person for the job, but also being able to channel his approach into leading Notre Dame here, one game away from its first national championship since 1988.

“We were so excited [in 2021], but it was trust beyond knowing,” Mills said. “Now, he’s taken it to a whole other level.”

Here is a glimpse into some of the moments that make Freeman, the coach.

‘He would be the guy to always bring the juice’

Freeman’s first shot at a Division I coordinator job came at Cincinnati, where then-head coach Luke Fickell hired Freeman to be his defensive coordinator. Freeman was only 30 years old, but it didn’t take long for him to find his footing with a group that had won just four games the year prior.

“He came in and immediately made a first impression on us,” said former Cincinnati defensive lineman Kimoni Fitz. “We were trying to find ourselves and restart the culture with the new staff, and he made it easy.”

It helped that the results materialized quickly. Freeman’s defense led the AAC in rushing defense, scoring defense and total defense, and it ranked among the top 15 in FBS in all three categories.

According to Fitz, as the defense improved over the season, Freeman would get with the Bearcats’ video team and cut up a highlight reel of their best plays from the previous game and show it to the defense as a way of motivation.

“We would already envision ourselves making the plays,” Fitz said.

Then, as Miami’s turnover belt became an object of fascination in the sport, Freeman instituted the “turnover dunk,” where players who created the turnover would dunk the ball on a small rim.

“He was such a high-energy guy,” Fitz said. “If we came to practice without any juice that day, he would be the guy to always bring the juice, and we would live off that and play off that.”

Freeman was also able to draw from his playing experience — Freeman had been a linebacker drafted by the Chicago Bears in the fifth round in 2009 — to get the most out of his players, a trait that kept resurfacing as Freeman was rising.

“He wasn’t ever too big for anybody,” Fitz said. “Because he was a former player, he knew what it takes and he knew what we actually went through every day and respected that. You wanted to play hard for him.”

‘The head coach is telling me he believes in me’

Irish running back Jadarian Price won’t soon forget getting called into Freeman’s office. After a fall camp practice, Freeman pulled the junior aside and flipped on some film from practice. Freeman was neither interested in praising Price nor scolding him. He instead wanted to challenge him.

“He was like, ‘I really believe, and we all believe, that you can make plays like this,'” Price recalled Freeman saying. “We know that you can break away and run, but I want to see you strap up and break through the line.”

Price first took the challenge as a negative criticism, but when he thought about it more, he was able to see what Freeman was doing, not just for him but for all the other players on the team he was challenging.

“The head coach is telling me he believes in me, and he thinks I could do this better,” Price said. “It was a great thing to have. If the coaches are quiet, it’s not such a good thing, but if they’re telling you something, it’s a good thing.”

As Freeman has attempted to get the most out of this particular team, players have become accustomed to his coaching style.

“A lot of people say he’s a great coach. No one really truly understands and experiences that [like us],” Price said. “How he is behind the scenes at his meetings, the way he speaks, his attentiveness, his involvement with every player. I think that’s really rare, him not just being the CEO of the program, but the coach who steps in and figures out a way to make every player better and get to know every player.”

Talk to any Notre Dame player, and they’ll harp on a similar thing: how easy it is to play for Freeman because of who he is and what he does, not just on the field, but off of it.

“He has a relationship with every single person on his team of how that person needs to be interacted with and motivated,” said kicker Mitch Jeter.

Linebacker Jack Kiser perhaps knows this as well as anyone on Notre Dame’s roster. Kiser has been at the program since 2019 and was coached by Freeman as a defensive coordinator in 2021. The list of challenges and motivation, constructive criticism and praise that Kiser has received from Freeman is long, but what sticks out to Kiser the most is how Freeman has been consistent through it all.

“You don’t talk to him and walk away feeling like he just lied to you or he was someone different,” Kiser said. “He’s just a very authentic, genuine person, and I think you see that on the sideline, too. You see his raw emotion come out. You see the way he processes things. He’s not able to hide some of his emotions, and that just goes to show that he really cares about us players and he cares about this place, this program.”

‘The right guy at the right time for Notre Dame’

“What was a place-kicker who had spent most of his time in the Carolinas doing here?”

That’s what Jeter, covered in as many layers as possible, thought to himself as he walked across the Notre Dame campus on a day when the temperature dipped well below freezing. The South Carolina transfer had recently arrived on campus and was experiencing a bit of culture shock. Freeman didn’t exactly coddle him.

“He really instilled in me that you come to Notre Dame to choose hard,” Jeter said with a smile. “Even if that is the weather or the class schedule or the football.”

Although Freeman said he didn’t follow Notre Dame football much before he was hired in 2021, the way that he has embraced the program’s history has stood out to players. Offensive lineman Aamil Wagner recalled a meeting earlier this season where they discussed the 1988 Notre Dame team, the last Irish team to win a national title, and tried to gather inspiration from it.

“All season he has gotten us so invested in the concept of going after team glory,” Wagner said. “Everyone remembers that 1988 team and how they got the crown jewel of the sport. We know what came before us, but we want to chart our own path.”

“He tells us all the time to be misfits,” Price said. “That seems like an unusual word for Notre Dame, but people like me, I’m not Catholic myself, I’m from Texas. I didn’t grow up thinking I would be at Notre Dame, and look, we have a minority head coach at Notre Dame. So it makes you feel a lot more comfortable as a player and just being led by someone who doesn’t care what the world thinks and stands by themselves.”

Whether it’s bringing transfers into the fold seamlessly or reinstituting pregame mass for the program, Freeman — who is the first Black and Asian coach to be in the title game — has struck a deft touch between utilizing Notre Dame’s tradition and history to bring the Irish together.

“He has completely embraced the University of Notre Dame and the University of Notre Dame has fully embraced him,” said offensive coordinator Mike Denbrock.

Said defensive coordinator Al Golden: “Marcus is the right guy at the right time for Notre Dame.”

‘Every week is now a playoff game’

The game that kept Notre Dame from heading into the title game with an undefeated record is also the one that likely allowed them to reach the championship. That particular thesis about the Irish’s shocking loss to Northern Illinois in September has now become folklore for this year’s players and coaches, in large part due to the way they say Freeman handled the defeat.

“After the NIU loss, a lot of coaches may scream and yell, and I’ve been in the building before where that’s happened,” Mills said. “But he wasn’t doing that.”

“The mood of the team and the feeling around the team always comes from the top down,” Denbrock said. “His ability to compartmentalize it a little bit, to analyze it, to kind of be willing to be vulnerable, us as a coaching staff, him as the leader of the program, and look at the things that we felt like we really needed to fix.”

Freeman, like he had done at Cincinnati, turned to a video, this time not of anything related to football, but of a high school hurdler who was tripped up by the second hurdle in a 100-meter race. The hurdler got back up and made a comeback, qualifying for the final heat where she won and set a personal record.

“He was like, ‘This is us and this is what we can do. Every week is now a playoff game,'” Mills said. “He just brought that intensity that we knew we didn’t have with NIU, and we kept that with us the rest of the season.”

Instead of burying the loss, Freeman utilized it, and it fueled the team’s dominance the rest of the season.

“He’s big about remembering the scars in the past. He’s always mentioning the scars and the troubles and the adversity, how to handle success,” Price said. “Even when we have success, even when we beat big teams like Penn State, Georgia, he always refers back to the past. Remember how you felt at this moment. That’s going to give us motivation.”

When the Irish faced off against USC in the last week of the regular season and headed into halftime tied with the Trojans — the first time since NIU they hadn’t had a halftime lead — they were able to remember their shortcomings, come out of the locker room and not let it happen again, outscoring the Trojans 35-21 in the second half. After the game, no one was shy about remembering exactly how many days it had been since that fateful NIU loss.

“To see where we were 84 days ago to where we’re at now, it’s a testament to trust and the decisions of those guys in that locker room,” Freeman said then. “This is what it’s all about, man. It’s the journey.”

‘One of us’

As the clock struck midnight in Miami on Friday Jan.10, Notre Dame players were celebrating their Orange Bowl victory over Penn State in the locker room when suddenly, Kiser made an announcement: It was Freeman’s birthday.

After congratulating him and singing happy birthday, the Irish players took the opportunity to poke fun at their head coach.

“Someone said he was turning 39,” defensive lineman Junior Tuihalamaka said. “We were all like ‘S—, Coach, you’re old’.”

Tuihalamaka laughs now thinking of the moment, while acknowledging the reality that underscores the barb: Freeman is one of the five youngest coaches in FBS.

“When he recruited me as a defensive coach, I felt the vibe and the chemistry I had with him right off the bat,” Tuihalamaka said. “He felt like an older brother and still feels kind of like an older brother.”

And while age does nothing to determine a win-loss record, to hear Notre Dame players talk about it, Freeman’s youth and the way he carries himself is a monumental part of his magnetism.

“Freeman is very personal and player-focused,” Cross said. “Kelly was a strategist. Coach Freeman is a players’ coach.”

Whether it’s letting players decide on the practice playlists and, as Prince put it, “vibing with us,” or making an effort to be invested in players’ lives outside of the sport, Freeman has struck the ideal balance between coach, mentor and friend.

“Everywhere he goes, he’s one of us,” said quarterback Riley Leonard. “You’ll see him [in Atlanta], he’s just wearing a jumpsuit, chilling with the boys, hanging out for media day. Then he knows how to flip the switch.”

“He understands us on a level that other coaches probably wouldn’t understand us on,” running back Jeremiyah Love said. “We love him. We respect him. We want to make him look good. He wants to make us look good.”

Notre Dame looks better than it has in a long time, and at the crux of it all is this symbiotic relationship between Freeman and the players. What started back in 2021 as a decision that had an entire team jumping up and down with Freeman as he was promoted to be their head coach has turned into one of the best runs the Irish have had in recent memory.

“I think the special thing about that video is he’s the defensive coordinator, and yet if you look, the whole offense was ecstatic when he walked through that door,” Kiser said. “Everyone believed in him then, and everyone believes in him now.”

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CFP doesn’t rule out ‘tweaks’ to format for 2025

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January 19, 2025

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CFP doesn't rule out 'tweaks' to format for 2025

  • Heather Dinich, Senior College Football InsiderJan 19, 2025, 03:50 PM ET

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    • College football reporter
    • Joined ESPN.com in 2007
    • Graduate of Indiana University

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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