CFB Playoff: As soon as Friday, a 12-team Playoff could be approved

On Friday, Sept. 2, a 12-team CFB Playoff expansion could be approved. Yes, such claims have been made before and all college football fans have been disappointed every time.

But we should take a deep breath and cross our fingers that this time it will actually happen. There are multiple reports about what has changed and the most detailed one comes from SI.com’s Ross Dellenger.

Click the link above for a full read, or keep reading for a summary and a ‘what it means’ interpretation.

According to Dellenger, who broke the story first, school presidents and chancellors decided to take action because conference commissioners had failed. As a fan, it can be said, collectively the commissioners failed miserably.

SEC football fans do not blame SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey. We also should not blame Notre Dame’s Jack Swarbrick, former Big 12 Commissioner, Bob Bowlsby and Mountain West Commissioner, Craig Thompson. The quartet worked long and hard and had a 12-team format hashed out before. But it did not receive the necessary unanimous vote.

So the school administrators, many with no sports backgrounds, have sensibly taken it on themselves. This time it might happen.

On Wednesday, it was learned the CFB Playoff Board of Managers will meet virtually on Friday. A unanimous vote is expected, expanding to a 12-team field for the 2024 college football season.

As explained by Dellenger,

"… details of the new format are likely to be left to commissioners to decide. Despite growing attraction to a 16-team field, the 12-team model remains the favorite"

CFB Playoff Board of Managers

A list of the 11 members of the CFB Playoff Board of Managers is available here. Suffice it to say they are the highest authority in the CFB Playoff organizational structure.

The ‘working out the details’ duty for the commissioners will not be easy. Old issues remain a threat. The rules for selecting teams, especially the auto qualifiers were a major problem last January. Adjusting a schedule to 11 games rather than three will be needed. The ‘pesky’ (and petulant) Rose Bowl group will have to be mollified.

Solve all the above and the next step will be working out the money. With its current contract running through the 2025 season, ESPN must agree to reopen negotiation. It is hard to imagine ESPN saying no, but coming to new financial terms would be complicated. Then the conferences would have to agree on how the new financial bonanza would be distributed.

Dennis Dodd, writing for CBS, stated a 12-team format would be valued at around $1.2B annually, compared to $600M now.

Plenty can still go wrong leading to another delay. If, everything that goes wrong, gets resolved the 2022 and 2023 seasons will be the last with a four-team format.