INDIANAPOLIS – Just as it looked like College Football Playoff expansion was coming to an end, a conference realignment started by jumping Texas and Oklahoma to the SEC put the entire process on hold. Last month’s meeting of the FBS commissioners in Park City, Utah, was so successful that it seems that those who have spent the last year fighting the expansion of the Common Fisheries Policy are getting closer to settling on a format.
“We didn’t solve anything, but we had a very good meeting,” one of the participants in the meeting told CBS Sports. “I came out of that meeting pretty hopeful. Then, five days later, boom. I don’t know what kind of effect we had on him. It was the best meeting we’ve had in over a year.”
That “boom” moment came on June 30 when news broke that USC and UCLA were joining the Big Ten. But even since then, commissioners have been optimistic about CBI expansion to the point that Big Ten commissioner Kevin Warren recently expressed interest in a 16-team model.
“I want to look at 16,” Warren told CBS Sports at the Big Ten Day. “I want to look at all of them. I want to look at everything but four.”
As proposed last year, 12 teams would have included the six highest-rated conference champions as well as six at-large bids. Warren voted against that model because he wanted a guaranteed spot for the Big Ten champion.
(Spoiler alert: The Big Ten champion was a virtual lock to be among the top six conference champions every year.)
Pac-12 commissioner Georgia Kliavkoff and ACC commissioner Jim Phillips joined Warren in that “no” vote. At the time, the passage required unanimous consent.
On Tuesday, Warren said he was “100%” in support of expansion. He then told The Athletic that he was “going to relax his position” in relation to the top six champions.
That may have something to do with the Big Ten and SEC becoming separated from the rest of college football. It could also be the realization that, after the current CBI contract expires after the 2025 season, a unanimous vote will no longer be required to change the structure.
Mississippi State president Mark Keenum, chairman of the CFP Board of Managers, said earlier this summer that he hoped the presidents would have an expansion resolved by next summer. An expanded bracket would be in place for the 2026 season.
Last week, SEC commissioner Greg Sankey indicated that he would support a bracket that includes the best teams available regardless of the conference champions. Sankey was part of a four-person subcommittee that spent two years modeling everything from four-team to 16-team games before settling on the proposed 12-team format.
The sudden interest in a 16-year-old is best explained by, “Why not?” Still, one high-profile industry insider called the idea “insanity” saying Sankey’s original subcommittee got it right at 12 teams.
A 12-team bracket is worth about $1.2 billion a year, industry sources told CBS Sports.
Support for the 16-team bracket may have clashed while the commissioners were in Park City for the annual meeting of the Collegiate Commissioners Association. Among those eligible to attend the meeting, only Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick was absent due to a prior commitment.
“I don’t have a problem with 16,” said Barry Alvarez, Big Ten senior football adviser. I think we need more access. College football needs more access to the playoffs. Every game was important. Now, you see people lose interest when someone loses a game early. Well, they’re out of the game.”
Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby, one of those expansion architects along with Sankey, explained that up to 30 teams would be in contention through November if a 12-team bracket needed to be filled.
Warren and others have already projected that a 16-team bracket would require all programs to begin their regular season in the last week of August. Right now, that space is labeled “Week Zero” — openings for a handful of teams before the traditional Labor Day weekend openings.
The 12-game season would then be completed in time for the first round of playoffs to begin likely during the second week of December.
