College Football Playoff expansion could be on hold barring a last-minute agreement between SEC and Big Ten leadership.<\/p>\n
If no agreement is reached by Friday, the CFP field will remain at 12 for next season.<\/p>\n
CFP leaders met leading up to the CFP championship game Monday and left without a resolution that would lead to the current 12-team field expanding to 16 teams next season.<\/p>\n
The SEC and Big Ten were granted the bulk of control of the format in 2024 via a memorandum of understanding signed by the 10 FBS commissioners.<\/p>\n
ESPN extended the deadline from Dec. 1 to Friday for SEC and Big Ten leadership to decide on a format that could be put in place for the 2026 and 2027 seasons.<\/p>\n
Georgia coach Kirby Smart and former Georgia and Miami coach Mark Richt have voiced support for an expanded playoff in the interest of providing more programs the opportunity to compete for the championship and adding life to a flailing bowl system.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m probably like most people in the majority, to be able to expand the playoffs, if it\u2019s done the right way, in terms of giving more teams the opportunity,\u201d Smart said in August.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople are not excited about midtier bowl games,\u201d Smart said. \u201cI think those bowl games are great experiences. I played in them, (and) I\u2019ve coached in them.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2026 That\u2019s an opportunity, but the more teams you give an opportunity to decide things on the field, like you do, whether it\u2019s college basketball, high school football, old (Division) I-AA football \u2026 you\u2019re going to get things decided on the grass. So, yeah, I\u2019d be for that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Richt, now an analyst for ACC Network, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution last week he also has advocated for more teams in the CFP field.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have thought 16 makes sense from the very beginning; it made more sense than 12 to me,\u201d Richt said. \u201cI\u2019ve been an advocate of 32 teams for years, and I think the next step might be that, to go from 24 to 32.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy goal was to revive the bowl games through those games because it makes those games more valuable.\u201d<\/p>\n
SEC commissioner Greg Sankey has made it clear he has interest expanding the playoffs, as has Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti.<\/p>\n
The Big Ten, however, has made its desire for a 24-team playoff well-known, and multiple reports \u2014including sources cited by On3 and ESPN \u2014 indicated the Big Ten won\u2019t sign-off on an expansion to 16 teams unless a contingency is in place for the playoffs to expand to 24 teams as early as 2028.<\/p>\n
The Big Ten, a television partner of Fox, has an obvious interest in creating a greater volume of games as that would provide its media partner more inventory.<\/p>\n
The Big Ten intimated last year it would not be on board with the SEC\u2019s 16-team CFP field model of five automatic bids and 11 at-large selections if the SEC did not move to a nine-game schedule.<\/p>\n
The SEC added the ninth conference game, starting next season, and a source close to the league office said there\u2019s a feeling the Big Ten has \u201cmoved the goal posts\u201d with its latest request to built in a 24-team contingency.<\/p>\n
Part of the reason the SEC is reluctant to agree to 24 teams is that it has an interest in maintaining the SEC championsip game.<\/p>\n
In addition to the various league\u2019s championship games possibly being eliminated should the CFP one day expand to 24 teams, there\u2019s thought the urgent nature of the college football regular season could be compromised.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"College Football Playoff expansion could be on hold barring a last-minute agreement between SEC and Big Ten leadership.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":698329,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[101816,7,802,5510,5509,60036,49,48,5512,5511],"class_list":["post-698328","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ncaa-football","tag-dawgbowl-2023","tag-football","tag-georgia-football","tag-georgia-football-recruiting","tag-georgia-recruiting","tag-mark-richt","tag-ncaa","tag-ncaa-football","tag-uga-football-recruiting","tag-uga-recruiting"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115943171999626279","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/698328","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=698328"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/698328\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/698329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=698328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=698328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=698328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}