What’s going on in the Big 12 and beyond? I expand and explain every Sunday in Postscripts at Heartland College Sports, your home for independent Big 12 coverage.
Well, here we go. It now appears we are as close to a 24-team College Football Playoff as we’ve been. ESPN’s handshake deal with the CFP to broadcast the remaining games means that assuming ever all the other boxes get checked, we will have a 24-team playoff in 2027.
Like it, or hate it, the future is coming. I took some time this weekend to jot down 10 big thoughts on what the playoff means to the Big 12, to college football and the future of the sport.
Big 12 Access
The Big 12 is one of the big winners in this expanded playoff. Commissioner Brett Yormark made it clear he wanted to ensure his conference got equal access to any expanded playoff. This expansion also gives his conference more access.
Earlier this week, 247 Sports applied the proposed format to the CFP era, which started in 2014 as a four-team playoff. In an average year the Big 12 would have ended up with four teams in the playoff. We know last year the Big 12 would have had five teams.
This is why the Big 12 coaches unanimously signed off on the 24-team format in May. They want more access. This is why Yormark joined forces with Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti after he abandoned the controversial weighted-bid system that bound the Big 12, the ACC and the SEC together last year. Yormark wants equal access and this system provides it.
Ultimately, if the Big 12 wants more respect on the field it needs to win more games. To do that, it needs more opportunity. The league has won one game in the CFP since 2014. You want to change that narrative? You gotta win games on that stage. This gives the league the chance.
The Format
The proposed 24-team format would include an automatic bid to each of the four power conference champions, an automatic bid to the highest-ranked Group of 6 and then 19 at-large bids based on the final CFP rankings. This is only a minor tweak from the 23 + 1 format that Petitti proposed.
If we’re being honest, I would rather have a 24-team playoff that includes auto bids for all conference champions. That’s 10 auto bids and 14 at large teams. That gives everyone a seat at the table and makes every race more meaningful.
But let’s be honest — the power conferences don’t care about giving the Group of 6 a seat at that table. Neither does ESPN and neither does the CFP. If we’re going to expand to 24, this is the most realistic format we can get to.
I hope at some point we have a Group of 6 team that runs roughshod through this playoff and embarrasses some of these teams.
The On-Campus Games
If we’re talking about positives, this is one of the big ones. The first two rounds will be on campus sites. That’s a tremendous value add to for college football. I would even argue you could have the quarterfinals on campus.
The pageantry around college football is a huge differentiator. That doesn’t always translate at a bowl game. But a first-round game at the right Big 12 stadium would pop.
The Bowl Games
This will significantly change the bowl system. If we’re being totally honest I think that’s a good thing. I’m the type of person that wants more meaningful football in the postseason. I don’t necessarily WANT a 24-team playoff — I think 16 teams is the max — but I want more games that mean something. Non-CFP bowl games don’t mean anything. They did two generations ago when they helped decide the national champion in the poll era. But they don’t mean much now.
Yes, they draw viewers because we love football. Coaches want the extra 15 practices. The players get a free trip and that’s great for them. But when I grew up sometimes eight-win teams got left out of the bowl system. You want to talk about “rewarding mediocrity?” Teams that go 6-6 go to bowl games. I hear people talking about rewarding mediocrity in a 24-team playoff? That’s not mediocrity.
We will lose some bowl games. It’ll be OK. We’ll still get bowl games. There just won’t be as many and, if done right, they can be just as meaningful.
The Non-Conference Games
The 9+1 scheduling format for power conferences — nine league games and one non-conference power conference game — will be a reality in this format. That’s a good thing for the game. (Hey, Indiana and Texas Tech could use a game next year — and college football could use that game).
But let’s get beyond the requirement. As I’ve written here before, the four power conferences should ditch the long-term game contracts and go to a year-to-year schedule for those games based on the quality of those teams NOW.
It seems ridiculous for Oklahoma State to sign a game contract with Mississippi State for games five years from now we don’t know what those teams are going to look like. Let’s get a balanced schedule that provide great games, great ratings and great impact on the playoff race.
The Conference Championship Games
They’re going away. They’ve outlived their usefulness. Back win the SEC implemented theirs in the 1990s I remember traditionalists losing their minds. But the way they did it — 12 teams, two divisions and the division champions meet in the title game — was elegant and that’s why everyone copied it (that and the money).
But with bloated megaconferences and unbalanced schedules, they don’t do much more than decide an auto bid to the CFP. And if 24 teams are going to make it, just determine your champ in the regular season and move on.
Now, yes, the Big 12 and other leagues will lose that revenue and need to replace it. About that …
The Money
The CFP is the big loser here. Why? They should have taken the additional inventory to market.
Per Pete Thamel at ESPN, the network will pay $345 million per year for the additional games. That’s on top of the $1.3 billion per year they’re paying for the 12-team playoff. Sounds great right? Well …
Thamel also reported this:
“Of that new $345 million, ESPN will only essentially be paying $205 million, as they are getting back $140 million annually from the cancelation of the three power conference championship games that ESPN owns the television rights to broadcast.”
I’ve made the case all along that if there was extra inventory that the CFP would be smart to take that extra inventory to market and get additional value. You don’t think Fox or CBS might have come to the table? Sports Illustrated’s Bryan Fischer did the math. There are 12 extra games and at $345 million that’s $28.75 million per game. That’s what ESPN is getting from TNT for the CFP sub-licensed games now.
The CFP fumbled the bag bad here.
The Big 12 Programs Best Positioned
If four Big 12 teams can get into the playoff in 2027, then who is the best positioned to take immediate advantage of this?
The three schools that leap to mind are Texas Tech, BYU and Utah. All have money behind the programs, quality coaches, great players and are great right now. That should carry over to next season. Plus, the five-for-five eligibility gives those coaches more time to develop young talent — if they can be kept, of course.
Beyond the immediate term there are schools that are starting to position themselves in the right way. Oklahoma State is one. I think their resources are going to keep improving if the Cowboys keep winning. Arizona and Arizona State feel well-positioned to be consistent players in this the next three-to-five years. All three schools, to me, have the right coaches, too.
I still think Houston and UCF are sleeping giants in terms of what they can be five to 10 years from now with the resources in those cities and their donor bases.
The beautiful thing about this conference is it’s so wide open anyone can make a run any given year. It’s the parity we’ve come to expect from the NFL, and I love the fact that we have at least one conference in college football that seems to embrace it.
Stop Crying About the Regular Season
Were you not entertained on Saturday? What an incredible day — and not just for the Big 12 after BYU beat Notre Dame. We saw five of the country’s Top 7 teams lose on Saturday. It shows you just how much parity exists in the college game right now. It’s fun. But all I got in my feed was “this goes away in 24-team playoff.”
No it doesn’t. That’s ridiculous. You’re going to stop watching great matchups on a weekly basis because of a playoff? Come on. I saw so much of that in my feeds on Saturday I put my phone away. The regular season isn’t going to die because of this.
Will it be different? Sure. Teams will have more wiggle room to get to the postseason. But this idea that suddenly the regular season is going to be a disaster because of this is just absurd.
There will still be drama every week of the season. There will still be great games you’ll watch. November will be so fascinating in 2027 that you won’t be able to turn away. I promise you. The regular season is not going to die. Stop buying that narrative.
The End Game
Now, 10 years down the road the way college football will be organized is going to be different — and that might be the biggest issue the game faces. I’ve written about this for years in this space. Eventually, the power conference will break away from the rest of the game and do their own thing. They’ll exclude the remaining Group of 6 teams after one more round of realignment and be their own league. The NCAA — if it’s still around — will reorganize what’s left and then we’ll have that Group of 6 “playoff” that REALLY no one wants.
That’s the greatest danger to the game we love — excluding an entire chunk of teams because they don’t make enough money. This is why giving every conference an auto bid would help preserve that ecosystem. But the power conferences don’t want that.
