ACC joins Big 12, Big Ten to create united front on 24-team CFP expansion with ball now firmly in SEC's court
The ACC's public push for a 24‑team playoff signals a coordinated effort to reshape access, revenue, and scheduling across college football -- and it places the SEC at the center of the sport's next major power struggle
AMELIA ISLAND, Fla. -- The ACC is on the same page about postseason expansion -- for now, at least. Commissioner Jim Phillips on Wednesday publicly said what had become apparent: The league's coaches and athletic directors have decided the playoff field should double. And in announcing its position when it did, the league has also set the tone for the next few weeks during crucial offseason meetings in each league.
The overarching question regarding playoff expansion of any size is simply: why?
The playoff has had only two years of its 12-team format. Even then, the format changed in Year 2 with a different seeding structure and rankings considerations at the behest of the SEC. After nearly 150 years without any playoff system, the change has come rapidly and may again soon. The crux of the matter is access, a case Phillips laid out while echoing the sentiments of both his member schools and himself.
"If you're going to ask presidents and chancellors and boards to continue to invest in their football programs, it's really important that they have hope, that they have an opportunity at the beginning of the season to get into the playoff," Phillips said. "I think it can also lead to better nonconference scheduling that you can afford a loss or two, or maybe even three."
While the NCAA does not control the College Football Playoff, the postseason tournaments it oversees -- including the FCS playoffs -- generally allow entry to around 19% of the teams at that level. Currently, just 9% of FBS teams make the CFP, but expanding the field to 24 teams would raise that figure to 17.4%.
Beyond the access component, Phillips also said he believes teams ranked No. 17-24 would be capable of winning the playoff. He expressed openness to either automatic qualifiers or an all-at-large system. What he is not interested in is an uneven automatic qualifier system like the initially circulated 24-team playoff proposals called for.
Ball in SEC's court
The Big 12 is already in favor of a 24-team playoff, which commissioner Brett Yormark confirmed to CBS Sports on the eve of Phillips' statement. How much will Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti lay out his intentions regarding expansion? That remains unclear. Big Ten meetings are next week, and Petitti is expected to be available to reporters to speak on the record, which is a relative rarity for a commissioner with far fewer public statements than his Power Four counterparts. If the Big Ten, Big 12 and ACC publicly align within a week, the spotlight will quickly shift to SEC commissioner Greg Sankey, who has clung to a 16-team model.
The American Football Coaches Association recently released a statement saying that "future playoff models should maximize the number of participants while honoring the proposed completion date." Sankey responded bluntly to the Tuscaloosa News.
"Last I knew, the AFCA is not in charge of dealing with the schedule, postseason games or even regular season games. I mean the entity," Sankey added. "Or figuring out where they fit in the calendar. I certainly respect their First Amendment rights, but there's a lot more depth [to this process] than a press release."
The SEC meets the week after Memorial Day, and the SEC and the Big Ten must agree on any format change for it to become official.
The broadcast rights
The CFP's broadcast partner, ESPN, also has some strong opinions that could affect expansion.
"ESPN has been pretty clear with all of us that they'd like it to stay at 12, maybe 14, but no higher than 16," Phillips said.
If the CFP expands, it's expected that another bidder would come into the mix with long-tail aspirations for a serious package -- a la the AFC/NFC split CBS and Fox have with the NFL. The second bidder could potentially land the rights to a semifinal with a rotating national championship game.
Another bid could theoretically increase revenue, and that will also be necessary, because even if the season expands to the late-August Week 0 date as expected, it seems like conference championship games will be on the chopping block to facilitate a move to 24.
"I have said before, when you look at [conference] championship games, and if you expand the playoff to [24], I think you end up going from regular season right into the playoff," Phillips said.
To oversimplify the economics: conference championship games are lucrative, and much of the CFP expansion discussion will hinge on whether the revenue from additional CFP broadcasts can make up for what will be lost by nixing conference title contests. The other pressing calculus concerns the extent of the regular season's devaluation, both monetarily and in the zeitgeist, given that the sport has long clung to a regular season that (albeit artificially) served as something of a playoff for over a century.
What happens next?
Even though this is the ACC's current position, those views remain subject to change as more data becomes available -- frustrating as that may be for fans who simply want clarity on how many teams will compete for the national championship at season's end.
"We have to understand what this does," Phillips said. "And so you hear coming out of here that we're for 24 and all the rest of it, but let me also kind of put it in perspective, there's been no vote on this thing in the CFP. We asked the CFP (and) Rich Clark, as the executive director and the staff, to run (proposals) with our TV consultant and other consultants. We have to run 16- and 24- (team models), and so we don't have all the information. But I know everybody's interested in the number, and I'm not interested in skirting it, and we want to talk about it, but we may come back and say boy, that 16 may look better, but as I sit here right now, I stand by what I've indicated."
