An expanded College Football Playoff is calling conferences like the Big 12 and much of the Power Four’s purpose into question these days. Josh Pate, one of the leading voices in college football, said Thursday that all of these leagues are living “on borrowed time,” in a new visit with ESPN’s Get Up program.
The College Football Playoff is slated to expand to 24 teams beginning next season, which makes this year the final 12-team playoff since expanding beyond four teams for the 2024-25 season. Not long after, each of the Power Four conferences, including the Big 12, announced their respective championship games would be discontinued next year.
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Pate has long criticized the consequences of an expanded College Football Playoff:
It’s a sad reality that conference titles are effectively meaningless in the world of an expanded College Football Playoff, but it’s not too difficult to understand.
A decades-long tradition of crowning a conference champion is now without its grand prize of awarding a guaranteed playoff seat, or in the BCS system, a jewel bowl game or national title bid. Those champions are still worth an automatic bid, but even a team with 7 or 8 wins could, in theory, earn one of those 12 new spots.
Moreover, what head coaches wants a non-factor contest after a full, 12-game regular season before embarking on a potentially six-week-long postseason run?
Not only does this change the chemistry of the conference-playoff relationship, but it makes one scratch their head as to what purpose a conference serves anymore. We’re seeing conferences cut strength-of-the-schedule blocks to outline their non-conference slate. Why not customize your entire schedule like Notre Dame?
Stepping back, it makes far more sense for a school like Texas Tech or Utah to stay put and retain its pathway to a College Football Playoff bid in the Big 12 versus an independent or opposing conference schedule. But the question’s gotta be on their minds – how long does this conference framework last, and when could it possibly hurt our growth down the line?
The Yormark exit will undoubtedly have an impact on the Big 12 positioning itself for a proper television deal, and how it markets itself against a conference like the SEC or Big Ten in this next phase of the College Football Playoff.
