For more than eight months, leaders of the College Football Playoff have been unable to unanimously agree on what the future format of the sport’s postseason should look like. This week, they finally agreed to disagree, recommitting to the four-team format for the next four years. Friday’s news ended all speculation about whether the playoff would expand before the current contract expires following the 2025 season.
That the 10 FBS commissioners and Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick were unable to agree to the specifics of a 12-team format was not surprising, considering that’s exactly what has happened during their past nine in-person meetings. (That includes three straight days of meetings before the national championship game in January.) Nothing changed Wednesday afternoon, when they had a critical videoconference to determine whether it was worth continuing to try to push forward in spite of their differences.
“Positions really had not changed, and we had time to think about it,” American Athletic Conference commissioner Mike Aresco told ESPN on Friday. “It wasn’t a lengthy call, but we talked it over, and if positions hadn’t changed, it was going to be a tough sell.”
On Thursday, the 11 school presidents and chancellors who have the authority to change the playoff approved a recommendation from the 10 FBS commissioners and Swarbrick to remain at four teams for the remainder of the 12-year contract, which runs through the 2025 season. Because there are still two years remaining on the current deal, the vote to make any changes had to be unanimous. CFP executive director Bill Hancock joined this week’s discussions from Beijing, China, where he is a volunteer for the Winter Olympics.
Most people involved in the CFP expansion discussions who spoke to ESPN have described the process and its outcome as frustrating and disappointing — a 180-degree turn from when the original proposal was made public on June 10. The 12-team format was initially applauded by…
Source : espn
