Jumbo Package: College football leaders waste more time on CFP talks
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Happy Thursday, everyone. The college football commissioners met yesterday to discuss the future of the playoff. Surely you didn’t expect any consensus, as the mighty dollar is all anyone is worried about.
The Big Ten and SEC have final say over the format, and the impasse between the conferences after last season kept the CFP at 12 teams for the coming season. The management committee has until Dec. 1 to inform broadcast partner ESPN of the 2027 format. Staying at 12 is the fallback if the Big Ten and SEC still can’t agree.
After the last meeting of the full management committee in April, the group pledged to do a deep dive into what it would take to implement a 24-team Playoff.
Among the most pressing questions: What is the value of the added games to new potential television partners, and will it cover the cost of eliminating conference championship games?
The combined value of the various conference championships is estimated at about $250 million. Just about all of that is tied up in the Power 4 conferences.
Heather Dinich has a few additional notes.
“I’ll be honest, every time we gave an answer, two or three more questions would pop out of that,” he said. “That’s how good decisions are made. So we walked away with a list of things that we have to figure out and work through and give them some options.”
The Big Ten initiated the idea of a 24-team field, and Clark said the league “certainly has brought some of the answers to the questions, but then other commissioners are coming from different perspectives and they have other concerns.
“So all conferences don’t view this in the same way, and all conferences have different concerns and questions that we need to answer so that they could all make an informed decision,” he said. “But it was a healthy conversation.”
Clark said the CFP is considering changing the recusal policy and also discussed “some changes to our metrics,” but declined to get into specifics. He said it will also continue to talk about ways to make ESPN’s selection show “as good as it can possibly be.”
What the “braintrust” comes up with regarding metrics and recusal should be utterly fascinating.
Colin Gay wrote about Alabama’s pipeline from the Red Elephants of Gainesville High school, home of one Blake Sims among others.
Alabama football’s red carpet for 2027 running back Nigel Newkirk – the helicopter that landed on the 50-yard line of the Gainesville High School football field – is nothing new. It’s actually something Deon Williams, Gainesville football’s recruiting coordinator, has a plan for.
Whenever a college program tells him when they will arrive via helicopter, Williams’ first text is to a teacher at Centennial Arts Academy, the school on the other side of Gainesville’s football field. When each helicopter lands, kids will come outside and wave, welcoming each coaching staff to Gainesville.
“It’s a good thing, man, for our kids to see, like, ‘Hey, maybe someday somebody’s going to come off a helicopter for me,’” Williams told The Tuscaloosa News.
Spenser Davis of SDS was celebrating Gump Day with us yesterday.
Alabama over Georgia
This is another spot where I think bettors are getting a discount if they’re willing to back a team with an uncertain quarterback situation. Alabama will have an inexperienced QB under center this year, but Kalen DeBoer has proven time and time again that he will produce excellent offenses even with sub-optimal quarterback play.
On the other side, Georgia’s offense has been mediocre by national title contender standards in recent years and I’d expect that to be true again in 2026. Alabama is one of the few teams on UGA’s schedule that it can’t bully with tough defense and a powerful run game. Given that Alabama is a home dog, I like backing the Tide here.
Last, Tom Layberger at Forbes wrote about realignment at the midmajor level including the new, sad Pac 12.
Oregon State and Washington State have company after two years of keeping the Pac-12 brand alive while in a schedule arrangement with the Mountain West. Five of those MWC teams join the Beavers and Cougars: Boise State, Colorado State, Fresno State, San Diego State and Utah State. Texas State arrives from the Sun Belt to make it an eight-team league.
Boise State is the king of the hill until proven otherwise. As such, the Pac-12 is an immediate player when it comes to representing the Group of Six in the College Football Playoff. Though 2025 was a disappointing five-loss campaign that opened with a disheartening 34-7 loss at USF and ended in similar fashion (38-10) against Washington in the LA Bowl, Spencer Danielson’s Broncos nonetheless won another Mountain West title. It was the Broncos’ third straight championship and fifth in a 10-year stretch.
That’s about it for now. Have a great day.
Roll Tide.
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