CFB Playoff: Playoff expansion meeting with hard issues left to resolve

Arguments over whether the CFB Playoff will expand are over. It will, and it could happen as soon as the 2024 season.

Last week when the CFB Playoff Board of Managers voted unanimously, the chair of that group, Mississippi State’s Mark Keenum said,

"There are still quite a few issues that have to be resolved — some very obvious logistical issues that have to be resolved…We have asked our commissioners, the management committee, to explore the possibility of us beginning the 12-team playoff format before the 2026 season, in either 2024 or 2025."

The hardest issue to resolve will be future revenue distribution. Moving from a four-team field to 12 teams is expected to increase the annual financial compensation from $600M to $1.2B. How that money will be distributed among the ten FBS conferences must be negotiated.

As Dennis Dodd reviewed recently, in the 2021/2022 Playoff cycle, the Power Five conferences each received $74M, while the Group of Five conferences split $95M. A move to 12 teams does not mean the Group of Five conferences will see their share of the Playoff substantially increase.

CFB Playoff Revenue Distribution

Dennis Dodd made an educated guess of how the future $1.2B will be divvied up.

• The SEC and the Big Ten would get equal shares of $300M, gobbling up half of the total revenue generated by the expanded Playoff.
• The ACC, Big 12 and the Pac 12 would split $360M, with a chance the ACC might get a larger share than the other two conferences.
• The Group of Five conferences would split $240M.
• Assuming the ACC splits equally with the Big 12 and Pac 12, teams in the SEC and Big Ten would receive an added $16.7M annually; the other Power Five teams would add $10M annually and Group of Five teams would gain an additional $3.9M each year.

The projection by Dodd is broad-stroke work. It does not factor in how revenue would be shared by independent teams, like Notre Dame. It also does not include any revenue being shared with FCS programs.

Could disagreements on splitting new revenue, slow or stop the Playoff expansion process? A guess is maybe slow, but not stop. But there is no incentive for the SEC and the Big Ten to reduce their larger portions of the new revenue. It could well be that in January, Greg Sankey was willing to back off no auto qualifiers, not just because it was best for all of CFB, but because the SEC and the B1G will gain so much new revenue.

We’ll see what happens when the commissioners and Notre Dame’s Jack Swarbrick meet this week. It should be quite interesting.