The College Football Playoff Committee made some serious, if somewhat unsurprising, waves a few weeks ago when they announced they would be backing a move to a 12-team playoff format. Chris Goforth was joined by Bill Bender of Sporting News to discuss the potential ramifications of this action.
It's a matter of when, not if, that the playoff field will expand. The soonest this change could take effect is 2023 and while it still has more hurdles to clear before it becomes official, "it's just a matter of time now," says Bender, "Because they wouldn't have showed their hand if this wasn't the direction that they were going to go."
But what of the bowl games? What about the regular season? Will teams still play a conference championship? How does the NCAA make this work?
"Well that's probably what they're trying to sort out next... it's a lot of TV money." He can say that again. Those television contracts will be crucial in the fostering of this new system, and we will likely be looking at some massive deals. As Jon Wilner of the San Jose Mercury News reported last week - based on research from a Chicago-based media research firm, Navigate - that schools in the PAC-12 could see their revenues jump 3x from $9 million to $27 million per school under this new format.
There's a lot of money at stake, but to a lot of college football fans that's not all.
The regular season is a special part of this sport. Nick Saban described an impact of the playoffs well back in 2015 when he said it would soon be all people care about. It was the argument for many of the detractors of an expanded system and here we are.
Bill Bender agrees, "It's going to change the way people watch the regular season and that's reality. He continued, "It's going to change what games mean, it's going to change the nature of certain rivalry games, no one game is going to mean everything... it's going to start to feel a lot more like the NFL."
We still watch the NFL, adds Chris Goforth, "Even though you don't hang on it every week - do or die - like you do sometimes in college football where one loss could eliminate your team."
The next generation of college football fans wants this to happen and that's likely why the NCAA has moved so fast to make it happen. We will be getting more playoff football, it's inevitable, but are we prepared for the concessions that come with it?