Josh Pate urges college football fans to push back on 24-team CFP: ‘These are not strong-willed people’
NCAAF College Football News, Photos, Stats, Scores, Schedule & Videos...
Josh Pate wants all college football fans to know that there is still time to prevent a 24-team College Football Playoff.
The ball appears to be in the SEC’s (and ESPN’s) court as conferences, coaches, and even some commentators coalesce around a 24-team framework with an additional round, more on-campus games, and no automatic bids.
In the latest episode of his show, Pate, who recently called the proposed expansion to the CFP one of the “most unpopular proposals” in the sport’s history, urged his audience to keep pushing. As Pate revealed, he is optimistic that, faced with enough backlash, college football’s decision-makers will change course.
“I understand a lot of you do not exist in the weeds here, and so it can start to seem like one by one, a lot of these real big-name-brand entities and these powerful people speak out in favor of 24, it just seems inevitable that we’re headed toward 24,” he explained.
But Pate said that as crunch time nears for the new plan (a meeting among CFP execs is scheduled for next month in Denver), cracks could form in the resolve of the powers that be.
“There comes a time you eventually have to sell this to the broader public,” he said. “And it’s collectively like five minutes before this happens, there’s this awareness of, ‘Oh crap man, we’ve got to dress this up as a football issue, we’ve got to dress this up as if it’s in the best interest of the game.'”
Recently, forced to put their thoughts out in the open, conference commissioners and network executives have tripped over themselves trying to explain why a 24-team bracket is necessary. Many of the arguments center on aspects of college football that weren’t broken until the past few years of upheaval across the sport, such as when Fox Sports’ Eric Shanks recently argued that an expanded CFP would rejuvenate early-season, non-conference competition.
And as Pate has emerged as one of the top voices pushing back on the proposal, he said he has been encouraged by the response from the upper echelons of the sport:
“The feedback I’ve gotten and the people I’ve spoken with, and there have been a bunch of them over the past week and a half, two weeks, the cumulative effect of those conversations has led me to come here tonight and tell you this into this microphone: Keep making noise, because it’s making an impact. If there’s one thing that the decision-makers hate, it’s their face being on a topic and a movement this unpopular. Because they’ve never been there before.”
While Pate said previous instances of CFP expansion had a “super majority” of approval from fans, he believes people in positions of power are taking note of how poorly the current plans are going over.
Pate added that because there are other pathways toward financial support and because the convictions on the 24-team format are not strongly held, every ounce of fan pushback goes a long way.
“It is wildly unpopular. They’ve lived in a bubble for a little while and weren’t aware of it. It’s been made abundantly clear to college football leaders… how unpopular the concept of a 24-team playoff is. So the college football public has seen through this,” he said.
“Now, you don’t get to make the decision, but I am telling you, these are not strong-willed people. A lot of these folks… are not hardened in their principled stance on this. There is one principle, and it’s finance. And there are more ways to make enough money for this thing to stay afloat than expanding the playoff.”
The post Josh Pate urges college football fans to push back on 24-team CFP: ‘These are not strong-willed people’ appeared first on Awful Announcing.
More at NCAAF College Football News, Photos, Stats, Scores, Schedule & Videos