The College Football Playoff Management Committee met Wednesday in the wake of the official move to the 5+7 model for the 2024 and 2025 seasons. The Management Committee, which is made up of the FBS commissioners and the Notre Dame athletic director, has now been tasked with negotiating a future for the CFP for 2026 and beyond. That includes the format for the playoff, revenue distribution and the media rights deal.
Going into the meeting, all parties involved were expected to put “their cards on the table” according to CBS Sports’ Dennis Dodd. Early reports from the first day of meetings suggest conference commissioners did just that, with several ideas emerging that would shake up the status quo.
The Big Ten and the SEC have been at the center of the discussions for college football’s future since forming their joint advisory board, and multiple sources told Dodd the two conferences were expected to request multiple automatic bids to the new format. Other potential changes could include expanding the field to 14 or even 16 teams.
Conference commissioners confirmed that both expansion and more auto-bids were discussed, though concrete decisions are still likely a ways off.
“We talked about some formatting and 14 (teams) came up,” Big Ten commissioner Tony Petiti told The Athletic. “We’ve got more work to do.”
“All that stuff (concerning multiple automatic qualifiers from a conference) is premature,” ACC commissioner Jim Phillips told The Athletic. “At the end of the day, it’s about the right model. We’re continuing to listen to each other and try to practically put something together that is good for college football.”
Though the CFP Management Committee members seem to be echoing the “no decisions” line, there is urgency for an agreement to be made. The number of teams in the field and the makeup of the playoff dictate the final details of a new media rights contract for the playoff, which sets the numbers for revenue distribution decisions. CFP executive chairman Bill Hancock laid out a soft deadline for those final decisions, telling Yahoo Sports he’d like to see it done “within the month.”
