Big Ten working on super-sized CFP plans with 28 or 24 teams to replace championship games

New York Times

a day ago

The Big Ten has been working on a super-sized potential College Football Playoff format that could at least double the current 12-team field and convert conference championship weekend into an expansive first round, according to multiple people who have been briefed on the concept.
The idea for a tournament with as many as 28 teams is just that at this point: an idea. It was presented to Big Ten athletic directors for the first time last week, one source said.
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Sources spoke to The Athletic on condition of anonymity on Saturday because the plan was in such an early stage of development. The Power 4 conference commissioners have not had anything more than cursory discussions about the possibility of a massive postseason expansion. And nothing has been presented to any of the other FBS conferences or Notre Dame.
The Big Ten was expected to send a slide deck with some details of the plan to the SEC this week.
One source called the plan a 'thought-starter.' Another expressed frustration with the plan leaking before it could be distributed among decision makers.
'No one knew anything about this,' the second source said.
CFP expansion talks have hit a snarl in the past few months. Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti has been pushing for an expanded field that would include multiple automatic bids for each power conference. The so-called 4-4-2-2-1-3 model would include a total of 16 teams, with the SEC and Big Ten getting four auto-bids, the ACC and Big 12 getting two each and one bid for the highest ranked champion from non-P4 leagues, plus three at-large bids.
The Big Ten has a plan to determine its four CFP participants in that model through a combination of conference standings and play-in games on championship weekend, which would give teams ranked third through sixth in the standings a chance to secure a Playoff spot. The SEC had not yet committed to how it would reimagine its conference championship weekend under the model.
Some SEC administrators did not like the idea that Big Ten teams would play into a 16-team CFP bracket by playing against each other.
'If there was a play-in between the SEC and the Big Ten, I think a lot more people would be on board with it,' an SEC athletic director told The Athletic earlier this summer.
Adding even more teams could bring something like that closer to reality.
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Big Ten officials and administrators believed the SEC was on board with their proposed auto-bid-heavy 16-team model, even though both the Big 12 and ACC were adamantly against it. The latter two conferences feared the brand damage that would come with a CFP format that deems their leagues half as good as the Big Ten and SEC.
The Big 12 pushed back with its public support of a 5-11 format that included five conference champions and 11 at-large bids. The model intrigued SEC coaches and some ADs and left the two most powerful leagues at an impasse.
Last season was the first with a 12-team playoff, and the format will only change slightly for 2025, with seeding that strictly adheres to the selection committee's rankings.
Now the focus is on what the CFP will look like for 2026 and beyond, and the new CFP contracts between the conferences that kick in next year give the SEC and Big Ten the power to essentially dictate the format.
The Big Ten isn't giving up on automatic bids, which Petitti insists will enhance the regular season by keeping more teams in the Playoff race deeper into November. He has also expressed dismay at leaning so hard on a selection committee to pick the Playoff teams.
Petitti is in his second year as Big Ten commissioner after a long stint as a high-ranking executive at Major League Baseball, where he worked on expanding those playoffs.
This new idea would have the Big Ten and SEC receive seven or six auto-bids while the Big 12 and ACC receive two fewer, in the hopes of assuaging fears in the Big 12 and ACC of being marginalized. Both the 28- and 24-team brackets would leave four slots for non-automatic qualifiers.
A 28-team field would include four first-round byes and a second round of games played entirely at home stadiums. A 24-team field would have eight byes, and again, two rounds of home games. First-round games could be organized to emphasize matchups between teams in different conferences. The plan would be an extension of the intraconference play-in game idea, with matchups across conferences as Playoff games.
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A Playoff this big would also require some restructuring of conference television deals that now include championship games, creating a lot of new broadcast inventory in return for eliminating showdowns between the leagues' top two teams. It would also raise questions about whether ESPN, which currently owns the broadcast rights to all the CFP games, would still hold claim over what would essentially be a new play-in round.
A change this significant might be difficult to put into place for the 2026 season, even if the conferences could reach an agreement in the next few months. Another source said that more realistically, this could be a format to implement in 2027.
Petitti and SEC commissioner Greg Sankey both said during their respective football media day events that if an agreement can't be reached on expansion, the CFP could stay at 12 for 2026.
A mega-expansion that eliminates conference championship games is not an idea exclusive to the Big Ten. The SEC has internally looked at a Playoff as large as 32 teams over the past few months, a person involved in those discussions told The Athletic.
Missouri coach Eli Drinkwitz recently outlined a plan for a 30-team bracket.
'Now you're talking about an opportunity for 30 teams, 30 fan bases to be excited and engaged, engaged in giving revenue,' Drinkwitz said. 'You've got 30 teams with players who have access to compete for a championship. So, for me, I think that makes a lot more sense.'
The next meeting of the full CFP management committee, which includes all 10 FBS conference commissioners and Notre Dame's athletic director, is scheduled for Sept. 24 at the Big Ten offices outside Chicago.
— The Athletic's Bruce Feldman contributed to this report.
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