ACC ADs and head football coaches on Tuesday during the league’s spring meetings discussed at length the future of the College Football Playoff, “swinging support behind a 24-team field,” according to sources cited by Ross Dellenger of YAHOO SPORTS. One source said, “There is consensus.” Another added, “The room isn’t split” (X, 5/12). ON3’s Nick Schultz noted the ACC is the second of the power conferences to “speak in favor of a 24-team CFP,” joining the Big Ten. The American Football Coaches Association has also “vouched for expansion with the ‘maximum number of participants.’” The SEC, on the other hand, has “long been in favor” of going to 16 teams if the bracket grows from 12 (ON3, 5/12). Big 12 Commissioner Brett Yormark added that the conference “also supports a 24-team field.” He said, “The Big 12 likes 24, subject to doing the work and figuring out the economics.” CBSSPORTS.com’s Marcello & Johnson wrote the development places “pressure on the SEC, which has yet to move beyond public support for a 12- or 16-team format.” The Big Ten and SEC share controlling interest in the playoff’s format, and any decision on expansion “must be reached in unison between the two most powerful conferences in college football” (CBSSPORTS.com, 5/12).
HOW IT’LL WORK: In Raleigh, Shelby Swanson notes after only sending one team to the CFP this past season, ACC coaches and administrators arrived at this week’s spring meetings “with a clear priority: access.” And in a sport increasingly shaped by the financial and political power of the SEC and Big Ten, expansion to 24 teams is “emerging as the league’s best path to secure it.” But the conversation has “quickly expanded, it appears, beyond how many teams should make the playoff -- and toward a more complicated question.” If the CFP was to expand, some wonder “when exactly” they would play. Under the current model, the college football season is “pushing deeper into January than ever before.” For coaches, that is “not just inconvenient” but “unsustainable.” N.C. State football coach Dave Doeren “put it more bluntly.” Doeren: “We can’t start Week 0 and finish at the end of January and think we’re doing what’s best for our athletes health-wise. We have to figure out how to make our season make sense and have a playoff.” For ACC coaches, the push for 24 teams in the CFP is “about staying relevant” (Raleigh NEWS & OBSERVER, 5/13).
