ACC commissioner reveals ESPN’s preferred playoff expansion plan
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The College Football Playoff will likely expand in the near future. There is also growing support from some major names in college football, such as Notre Dame AD Pete Bevacqua, supporting a 24-team model.
ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips is also supporting the 24-team model for playoff expansion, per Brett McMurphy of On3.
“Our desire with the coaches and the ADs is 24,” Phillips said. “When you’re leaving national championship-contending teams out of the playoff, you don’t have the right number. We lived through it, we suffered through it with Florida State, when the field was four. I know other schools have suffered for it. Notre Dame was a CFP worthy team last year and you saw what happened to the last team that got invited with Miami.”
While the ACC is supporting 24-teams, Phillips also revealed one other major player may not be interested in playoff expansion, and that is ESPN.
“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.
It would make sense for ESPN not to be interested in further expansion. The company owns the broadcast rights to the CFP, and currently sublicenses some games to TNT. They own the rights up to a 14-team field, meaning that if the CFP expands beyond 14 teams, they would need to bid for additional games. That could lead to other networks holding the rights to some of the college football playoff games.
Beyond CFP games needing to be bid on, this would likely lead to the loss of bowl games, which ESPN currently produces. While bowl games see opt-outs and not the same audiences as CFP games, they still bring income to ESPN. The company would lose that income if some bowls cease to exist due to expansion, and ESPN does not get the rights to the additional CFP games.
Regardless of what ESPN wants, the CFP will likely expand, and ESPN will be bidding on the additional games.
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