“If we come to a decent deal, we’ll definitely go to 24” — CFP execs discuss logistics of 24-team playoff

ROSEMONT, Ill. — College football playoff leaders took another step Wednesday in what has been a long and winding road to expanding the sport’s postseason to 24 teams.

The fact that it happened here in suburban Chicago, at the home of the Big Ten, is just a coincidence. The league that initially pioneered the 24-team playoff model hosted the annual gathering.

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The consensus: A doubling of the playoffs seems like a foregone conclusion – even if no one will say it publicly.

“We’ve resolved a lot of other issues associated with (24 team) expansion and those things needed to happen before we started any sort of negotiation (over money),” CFP Executive Director Rich Clark said, pulling back the curtain a bit.

Talk of a 24-team playoff field, floated as a realistic proposal by the Big Ten last August, has accelerated this summer and, now, into the fall: from the SEC’s staunch opposition to the format last fall, to the Big Ten blocking a 16-team expansion in January; of the ACC, with Big 12 and Notre Dame expanding from 16 to 24 teams in March, to SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey, who last month circulated the expansion requirements — a sign of openness to accepting a 24-team field (he requires all Power League teams to play 10 games against Power Conference programs).

Here in Chicago, CFP leaders held their first in-person meeting since deciding to enter the 30-day negotiating window with ESPN on an expanded field (the most discussed model is 23 at-large selections plus one spot for the top-ranked Group of Six program).

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Conference commissioners talk schedules, logistics and the elimination of their league championship games — all conversations took place with ESPN as the network works to make a formal offer before its negotiating window expires (Oct. 9).

Things are serious — serious enough that Clark, when asked, revealed part of the schedule for a 24-team field. The eight new first-round games should “ideally” begin two weeks after the regular season ends, he said, leaving one week open where the conference championship games are currently being played. Additionally, all eight second-round games will “most likely” be played on the top seed’s campus during the third week of December, he said.

Would CFP leaders really spend hundreds of hours on planning and logistics only to ultimately decide not to expand to 24 teams? That’s unlikely, especially considering “the money is there,” as one CFP stakeholder told Yahoo Sports. That’s a reference to the biggest determining factor in expansion: Can power leagues recoup lost revenue from the elimination of their conference championship games?

This figure is estimated to be at least $250 million.

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“Revenue is unknown,” Clark said Wednesday. “That’s why we’re in this negotiation window.”

CFP executives and ESPN executives have until Oct. 9 to come to an agreement before CFP officials put their 24-team product on the open market. If that happens, they will have about two months until another deadline, Dec. 1 — when expansion must be determined for another playoff run in 2027.

Meanwhile, scheduling logistics remain one of the biggest hurdles, particularly the situation with the Army-Navy game, one of the most-watched events, traditionally played on the second Saturday in December. In a 24-team model, the game could move forward a week, to the first Saturday in December, where the conference championships are now played.

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The match would begin six days after the CFP committee selects the pitch. What if Army or Navy were in the running for a playoff spot?

This is a looming and unanswered question.

There are others.

What’s going on with bowling games? While six bowls are slotted into the CFP rotation, about a dozen other games that traditionally host Power League teams will see their participants fall outside the top 25.

As reported on Yahoo Sports this spring, conference executives discussed creating a 10-bowl lineup that would pit power conference programs against each other in a deal in which media rights would be controlled by the leagues, not the bowls.

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Meanwhile, as the Army-Navy and bowls are settled, the road to a 24-team playoff is becoming clearer and clearer.

“If we can get a decent (TV) deal, we will definitely move on to 24,” said one confident stakeholder.