One day later, College Football Playoff expansion feels no better than it did when the 24-team format became official Monday morning.
It’s an unpopular move made by campus executives and conference commissioners consumed by self-interest and motivated to mollify donors who are funding rosters through NIL.
The 12-team format works just fine. Better than fine, actually. It’s superb.
But in their infinite wisdom, the sport’s powerbrokers opted to double the size of the field.
Here’s our look at the winners and losers from a decision that will have massive implications for the sport 24/7/365.
Winner: ESPN
The entity that was perhaps most opposed initially to expansion is the biggest winner, both financially and competitively.
Instead of taking the media rights to the additional inventory to the market, the CFP opted to stick with ESPN as the exclusive rights-holder.
As a result, ESPN was able to prevent its chief competitor, Fox, and its secondary competitors in the college football space, NBC and CBS, from grabbing a chunk of the postseason pie.
(By extension, that’s good for ESPN’s main partner, the SEC, and bad for Fox’s main partner, the Big Ten.)
What’s more, it didn’t cost the network an excessive amount.
According to an ESPN report on the details of ESPN’s agreement, the price for the 12 added games is $340 million annually.
Except it’s not.
ESPN has been paying roughly $150 million for the rights to the ACC, Big 12 and SEC championship games. (The Big Ten game airs on Fox). Those will be eliminated starting next season, allowing ESPN to redirect the cash to the expanded playoff.
On a net basis, the network must dig into its pockets for approximately $190 million.
The SEC championship is typically a ratings blockbuster. But that’s not usually the case with the ACC and Big 12 editions.
We cannot begin to guess the ratings for the eight opening-round games and four second-round games that are replacing the conference championships on ESPN’s inventory shelf. But our guess is the eyeballs will make ESPN’s $190 million outlay well worth the effort.
Could the conferences have generated more than $190 million in new money had they taken the 12 games of added inventory to the market? Our hunch: probably.
Loser: Fox
Last fall, Fox Sports CEO Eric Shanks voiced support for the 24-team format, indicating the network would want a piece of the inventory: “I’m very much in favor of expanding the CFP … It would give the CFP the opportunity to have more networks involved.”
That never happened. As noted above, the CFP declined to take the additional inventory to market and instead doubled down with ESPN.
Whether Fox would have mustered the cash necessary for the less-valuable opening- and second-round games — the late-round matchups would remain with ESPN — we cannot say with any degree of certainty. Preserving cash for the NFL media negotiations in a few years would have been a factor.
But at the very least, Fox wants CFP expansion to have the desired impact and spur Big Ten schools to create better non-conference matchups. The situation was so bad this season that Indiana-North Texas was Fox’s ‘Big Noon’ game for the opening week of the season.
The Hotline is deeply skeptical that expansion will spawn a barrage of A-list matchups. A few here or there? Sure. But enough to make a substantive impact? Probably not. Instead, coaches will look for the easiest power conference opponents they can find because that’s exactly what coaches do.
It’s easy to envision Fox being on the wrong end of an expansion triple-whammy: no major change to the Big Ten’s lackluster September lineup; a conference season sapped of intrigue; and no piece of the playoff.
Winner: Tony Petitti
As the chief architect of the 24-team format, the Big Ten commissioner can finally claim victory after a series of strategic misses (private capital and the spring transfer portal, to name two).
Petitti initially pushed for a 16-team event, with multiple automatic bids for the power conferences, that was roundly rejected. He returned to the laboratory and eventually crafted a 24-team format that received support from the ACC and Big 12 and, eventually, the SEC.
With 19 at-large bids, Petitti’s plan is a gift to the schools on the second tier of his sprawling conference (e.g., Iowa, Wisconsin, Washington, Illinois and others) that faced steep challenges making the cut for the 12-team event.
Whether his plan creates a more prosperous future for the sport, only time will tell. Petitti views greater postseason access as a good thing and has pointed to his former employer, Major League Baseball, as proof that playoff expansion works.
But Petitti, on the job for 3.5 years, doesn’t seem to understand that college sports are not pro sports and that college football, in particular, must remain distinct from the NFL. Playoff expansion, which will open the event to three- and four-loss teams, will have the opposite effect.
Petitti could be remembered as a visionary who changed the sport for the better or, perhaps, as the author of a plan gone wrong that carries massive unintended consequences.
Loser: Fans
Survey after survey in recent months — some had thousands of respondents — showed an overwhelming majority of fans opposed the 24-team field.
Many want the CFP to remain at 12.
Some would be satisfied with 16.
Most — by that, we mean at least 70 percent — did not want 24.
CFP honchos know about the customer dissatisfaction, and they don’t seem to care.
“We’re aware of the fan sentiment and that many fans aren’t in favor of expansion,” executive director Rich Clark said Monday on a media teleconference. “That was certainly weighed into the decision. It was considered.
“Ultimately, we just need to make a spectacular playoff. The CFP has a responsibility to our fans; they’re the lifeblood of college football … We did take into account their sentiment. That was rolled into this decision. But we decided to move forward with it.”
Of course they did.
Winner: Campus vibes
Of this, there is no doubt: on-campus playoff games are awesome. With the 24-team field, there will be a bevy of them — 16, to be exact.
How does it work? The Nos. 9-to-16 seeds will host opening-round games on the second weekend of December, and the Nos. 1-to-8 seeds, after a bye, will host second-round games on the third weekend of the month. (Games will be played Thursday through Saturday.)
Sure, many schools will have concluded final exams, but that won’t undercut the stadium atmosphere.
And if the weather doesn’t cooperate, all the better. Playoff football, at any level, is meant to be played in the rain, sleet and snow.
Loser: Bowl games
What will become of the 30-something bowl games that aren’t part of the CFP? Nobody knows.
The math is ominous: Playoff expansion will remove the top 12 teams from the pool, meaning bowl games on every level will be forced to invite lower-quality teams than they have in recent years.
We suspect a few bowls on the bottom tier will shutter, as the LA Bowl did last winter.
But generally, the system isn’t going anywhere. ESPN, which operates many bowls and televises most, needs the programming.
Winner: Major bowls
The on-campus games conclude after the second round, allowing the Rose, Sugar, Orange, Cotton, Fiesta and Peach Bowls to continue hosting the quarterfinals and semifinals. (The Rose Bowl will be a permanent quarterfinal site in order to maintain its New Year’s Day broadcast window.)
Why not adopt the NFL model with home games for the higher seeds through the semifinals? The CFP has contracts with its six bowl partners and no intention, or desire, to break the agreements.
That reality is more problematic than it seems, because the major bowls want no part of hosting the quarterfinals prior to Christmas.
If the CFP cannot move the round of eight to the weekend before Christmas, it cannot slot the championship game into the preferred window in the first half of January.
Loser: Group of Six
The American, Conference USA, MAC, Mountain West, Pac-12 and Sun Belt collectively view playoff expansion as an opportunity. With 24 spots for 138 FBS teams, the new format seemingly offers access to 17.4 percent of the Football Bowl Subdivision schools.
The reality is quite different. The Group of Six schools have one automatic bid and will struggle to produce teams worthy of at-large berths because the selection process heavily favors teams from the power conferences.
Perhaps the Group of Six will collect an at-large berth once every three years. With that baseline, there would be 22.7 spots for the 68 teams in the Power Four, including Notre Dame. That’s 33 percent of the Power Four teams making the field.
And there would be 1.3 spots for the 70 schools in the Group of Six, or 1.9 percent reaching the playoff.
That’s tough math.
Winner: Notre Dame
It’s good to be the Irish for many reasons, but CFP expansion is near the top of the list.
The current selection process features a carve-out that guarantees Notre Dame an at-large berth if it finishes in the top 12 of the selection committee’s rankings.
The Irish have a deal with the ACC for five games per season and control the other seven. As long as they finish 9-3, an at-large bid will await. Given their resources, that won’t be problematic.
Wash, rinse, repeat: The Irish have no reason (none, zero, zip) to join a conference.
Loser: Head coaches
They pushed for expansion in near-universal fashion, not because it’s better for the sport but because it’s better for their job security: Greater access ultimately translates to satisfied university presidents, happy donors, contract extensions and performance bonuses.
Whatever they’re smoking, it’s strong stuff.
In the real world, coaches with well-funded rosters who don’t make the 24-team field will instantly be on the Hot Seat.
The same goes for coaches at football powerhouses who lose in the opening round.
LSU fans won’t look kindly on Lane Kiffin losing as the No. 10 seed to the No. 23.
USC fans won’t accept Lincoln Riley losing as the No. 13 seed to the No. 20.
Expansion will raise the bar, not lower it, eventually putting more jobs in danger each December.
College football would do itself a huge favor by asking the coaches for their opinion on a slew of strategic endeavors, then doing the opposite of what they suggest.
*** Send suggestions, comments and tips (confidentiality guaranteed) to wilnerhotline@
*** Follow me on the social media platform X: @WilnerHotline
The post CFP expansion: Assessing the winners and losers, from ESPN and Fox to Notre Dame, bowl games, fans and the Group of Six first appeared on Sports360AZ.