Notre Dame football fans better buckle up. Like it or not, a 24-team College Football Playoff field is closer than ever to becoming reality.
Ross Dellenger of Yahoo! Sports reported Wednesday evening that College Football Playoff leaders took another step down a long road toward expanding the playoffs beyond its current 12-team format. Dellenger pointed out that the meeting, taking place right in the Big Ten’s backyard, was more a coincidence than conference commissioner Tony Petitti using home field to push something he originally advocated for.
"We've worked through a lot of the other issues associated with [a 24-team] expansion and those things needed to happen before we started any kind of negotiation [over money]," CFP executive director Rich Clark said on Wednesday. The comments seemed to show once again that the expansion is now a foregone conclusion.
Discussions over a 24-team playoff field, introduced as a realistic proposal by Petitti and the Big Ten last August, have picked up speed in recent months. For a while, the proposal seemed dead in the water because of the SEC's staunch opposition.
Notre Dame football faces unique advantages if College Football Playoff expands to 24 teams
The SEC in fact, favored an expansion to 16 teams instead, but the Big Ten played a little tit-for-tat, blocking the addition of just four teams and insisting the only expansion the B1G would agree to was the 24-team format.
Another roadblock, Notre Dame, the ACC, and the Big 12 all siding with the SEC was removed in March when they suddenly all changed their tune and decided that if the money was really there for such a move, they were in favor of it. Finally, the SEC showed signs in the last couple of weeks that it, too, was losing its will to fight against the doubling of the College Football Playoff field.
CFP executives held their first in-person gathering since deciding to enter into the 30-day negotiating window with ESPN over an expanded field on Wednesday. Conference commissioners are discussing schedules, logistics, and eliminating their league championship games. Coaches have favored the latter since the field grew to 12. Many schools also hinted this would happen if 24 teams ever became the reality.
The window to come to a deal or leave the CFP at 12 teams closes on October 9. However, that still seems like plenty of time to iron everything else out with more than a week to go.
Dellenger broke down the reality of the situation following his report that all sides are close:
“Would CFP executives really spend hundreds of hours over scheduling and logistics only to decide against expanding to 24 teams? It's unlikely, especially when considering that "the money is there," as one CFP stakeholder told Yahoo Sports. It's a reference to the single biggest determining factor on expansion: Can the power leagues recuperate the revenue lost from the elimination of their conference championship games?”
Considering that’s not a worry for Notre Dame, it’s not hard to see where the Irish will land on this issue.
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