Rich Clark has run the College Football Playoff the way he ran the Air Force, with the discipline of following protocol and the chain of command and the resolve to make decisions that can't be undone.
He'll be put to the test again over the next four months as CFP decision-makers face another hard deadline to decide whether to expand the college football postseason tournament.
The CFP's management committee will gather Aug. 10 for its first substantive meeting since January to discuss formats and view presentations from media advisers on scheduling, TV windows and timing considerations for 16- and 24-team formats, sources tell CBS Sports. The meeting won't produce a decision on format, but it's designed to provide details to inform decisions expected later this fall.
"There are so many considerations regarding the calendar, regarding student safety and health, regarding campus schedules, the schedule for finals and things like that," Clark, the CFP's executive director, told CBS Sports. "Where are we going to play these games? What is the calendar really going to look like? What's the revenue discussion look like, and what does that do to things like conference championships?"
That last question sits at the center of the entire debate. Expanding to a 24-team field would eliminate conference championship games. A 16-team format makes it more difficult for conferences to maintain their end-of-season title games, but it's not impossible.
"As great as our championship has been -- it's been wildly successful -- we've had incredible games the last couple of seasons, but I still think we're willing to do that because we believe that access is still the most important thing," Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti said.
The Big Ten supports a 24-team format, but the SEC remains uneasy with the option and has long offered a 16-team field as the strongest option for expansion. Still, SEC commissioner Greg Sankey said late last month the conference is open to learning more about the Big Ten's proposal and whether media partners are interested in doubling the size of the playoff.
"We don't have any idea at this point of the clear media interest in an expanded playoff," Sankey told CBS Sports at the SEC's media days in July. "We're not necessarily interested in finding the easiest path. We are focused on finding the right path for college football."
The Big Ten and SEC control the decision-making power on the CFP management committee and must agree on any future format changes. Without alignment between the Big Ten and the SEC, nothing moves, and the format remains at 12 teams. Last season, a Dec. 1, 2025, deadline to decide on expansion for the 2026 season was pushed back nearly two months to Jan. 23, 2026, and ultimately expired without a resolution. The SEC remains the lone Power Four conference that has not thrown its support behind a 24-team field.
Petitti, speaking at Big Ten Media Days in Chicago and separately to CBS Sports, dropped the conference's previous push for automatic qualifiers in a 24-team field and is now focused on a committee-selected 24-team field. Several SEC athletic directors expressed disinterest in handing more power to the selection committee during the league's spring meetings in 2025. Petitti said he has "never heard" Sankey say he won't consider it.
Clark confirmed the field of options has been narrowed to three: stay at 12, move to 16, or go to 24. The management committee has identified a predominant model for each expansion option. He revealed to CBS Sports he was asked in those sessions which format he preferred, and presented one himself: a version of a 16-team model that blended automatic qualifiers with at-large selections by the committee. But he stopped short of advocating for it.
"Whatever format they come up with, we're going to have to execute it," Clark said. "I see the good in all of them."
The calendar is where the distance between principle and logistics becomes most visible. The current 12-team format offers a useful baseline. First-round games this season are scheduled for Dec. 18-19, with quarterfinals Dec. 30-Jan. 1 and semifinals Jan. 14-15. The national championship is Jan. 25 in Las Vegas.
But it's that late date for the title game -- and the long layoff between the regular season and the first round -- that have drawn criticism from coaches and administrators. The American Football Coaches Association proposed a new competition calendar that would move the season up to late August, the window typically reserved for "Week 0" games. The AFCA proposed eliminating conference championship games and providing at least six days of rest between playoff games. The new calendar would allow the postseason to conclude by the second Monday in January.
A 16-team bracket wouldn't require dramatic calendar changes. Under the proposed 16-team model, the bottom four seeds would play the second weekend of December. Six on-campus games would follow in the next round, with the top two seeds earning byes to the quarterfinals at traditional New Year's Six bowl sites Dec. 31 and Jan. 1.
An earlier start to the season, however, would allow conference championship games to be played on Thanksgiving weekend, allowing the CFP to start a week earlier in December.
Conference championship games would likely survive in the 16-team model. The SEC's title game generates more than $80 million a year for the conference, and Sankey has made clear he isn't inclined to give that up without a compelling reason.
Twenty-four teams are a different animal. Conference championship games would disappear. The top eight seeds would receive first-round byes while the remaining 16 play on-campus games.
The hope is to hold the national championship game in mid-January, though an earlier start to the season could allow it to be played in the second week of January.
Two rounds of on-campus games before bowl sites take over add both complexity and time to an already compressed window. CFP semifinals are already played on weeknights to avoid conflict with NFL Wild Card Weekend, and the NFL regular season now runs into January with Saturday games, narrowing available windows. More rounds mean more windows with tighter openings.
Clark lived through the transition from four to 12 teams, and expanding the CFP further will be a big ask.
"We put in hours and hours to get it down so that it was very smooth," he said. "How to employ the logistics, how to educate the campuses, how to educate our bowl partners. A lot of pre-work went into it. If they change the format, we'll do it all over again."
The hope is that a decision this fall will be a long-term commitment. Clark said a one-year bridge solution is possible under the contract language with ESPN, but added that CFP executives would prefer not to settle for a temporary solution.
"They don't want a decision they have to go back on," he said. "That's why they're being so deliberate."
Commissioners are also tired of debating the format with no consensus in the room.
"We do need to bring this conversation to conclusion in short order so we can move on and focus on the future of the game," Sankey told CBS Sports.
