How would a college football playoff expansion come together?
College Football Enquirer co-hosts Ross Dellenger, Andy Staples and Steven Godfrey report on where things stand regarding the college football playoff expansion debate. Hear the full conversation on the "College Football Enquirer" podcast - and subscribe on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , YouTube or wherever you listen.
Video Transcript
Obviously, they've been debating this for several months, if not years, probably a year and a, a good, a good solid year and a half, two years, I guess, is the, the debate between the 16 and, 2014 playoff, what to, what to move to now.
And it does seem like we're, we're getting closer to something, a decision happening.
And the first thing that has to happen is that you have, the CFP trigger the 30, mandatory 30-day, negotiating window.
So ESPN would have 30 days to basically offer, make, make an offer for a 2014 playoff.
It's not a commitment.
It was described to me as triggering the window doesn't mean you're gonna h- you're gonna definitely commit to expanding, but you're gonna see what the figure would be of expansion.
Mm-hmm.
And then if ESPN's number is not what, what you, if it's rejected by CFP leaders, then you can go to the open market, right?
Which- And, and you need to decide by December 1- is kind of the point is the deadline to- Yeah.
Yeah.
The, yeah, for sure.
I think many people in the room wanna go to the open market.
I'm sure they will.
Um- They should they did, remember they did two years ago for the 12-team version.
Mm-hmm.
And then they went back to ESPN because the open market, nobody was able to match ESPN's number.
Yeah, Fox, uh- Yeah Fox blew it, and now Fox is like, "Oh, crap.
We, we maybe should've put in a competitive bid there."
Uh- Yeah.
The most interesting part of your story, I thought, was the memo from Greg Sankey, though.
Yeah.
Yeah, that, that was, interesting.
It went out to management committee last week.
It was really long, but I think the main point i- he was listing off sort of conditions in order for the SEC to maybe come around to a larger, field, a larger playoff field.
And one of the conditions was 10 qualifying games that each, each school would have to play 10 qualifying games to be eligible for the CFP.
And a qualifying game is a nu- a number one, conference game; number two, game against Notre Dame; and number three, power conference, non-conference game.
