‘Smoldering Dumpster Fire,’ ‘A Downward Spiral’ — Central Michigan HC Matt Drinkall Rips CFB Leaders Over 24-Team Playoff
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Central Michigan head coach Matt Drinkall was asked on his weekly media Zoom for his take on the 24-team College Football Playoff. Before he answered, he had a question of his own: “How long would you like me to answer?”
He wasn’t kidding. By Mitten Football’s count, he spent the next 10 minutes tearing into the expansion, the people driving it and nearly every major change college football has made since COVID.
The deal is nearly done. Yahoo Sports’ Ross Dellenger reported Monday that ESPN and the CFP have reached agreement on a 24-team field that would begin next season. Both the Big Ten and SEC, the two leagues that control the format, are on board, and he wrote that the contract should be signed soon.
Matt Drinkall Calls Everything Since the Pandemic a Downward Spiral
J.H. Jimenez of By The Belt asked the question. According to the full transcript Mitten Football published, Drinkall laid out a forecast: “If they move to this, it will separate Power 4 football into its own separate thing of Division I football.”
From there Drinkall widened the lens well past the playoff. By The Belt, a credentialed outlet covering the MAC, posted this part of the answer Tuesday:
“All everything since COVID has just 100 percent been reaction. No one has ever said ‘OK, well if we do this, what does it look like 15 years from now?’ ‘What does this look like 10 years from now?’ ‘Is this in the best interest culturally of everyone?’ Or is it all ‘just how do I … make the most money right this second right now?’ … Whoever has to sell TV spots or tickets at every school or promote a conference, they’re not interested in what’s good for the sport of football.”
Then Drinkall went down the list: “Conference realignment, eligibility, paying players, transfer policies… None of it’s good. None of it is in the best interest of the student-athlete, none of it’s in the best interest of the sport.”
“It’s just like everybody went nuts at once,” Drinkable continued.
“And it’s just been a downward spiral that is nonstop until it’s going to be a smoldering dumpster fire left like the Truffula trees and the Lorax. Like they’re going to wring this sport out for every cent they can as long as they can and prostitute the sport for financial gain.”
Drinkall Sees a Power 2 and One Carrot for Everyone Else
Drinkall was just as pointed about who the new bracket serves. He predicted that “they’ll take the Power 4s, they will take one Group of 6 teams as a carrot to dangle in front of everybody.”
The format Dellenger described guarantees the Group of Six one spot. Each power conference champion receives an automatic bid, and so does the highest-ranked Group of Six champion.
But Dellenger noted that the power champions won’t need those bids to make a 24-team field. In practice, he wrote, that means 23 at-large bids and one automatic spot for a champion from the Sun Belt, American, Conference USA, Mountain West, Pac-12 or MAC, the league the Chippewas play in.
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Drinkall was blunt about where that leaves everyone else: “We’re all gonna complain into the abyss for nothing, and they’re gonna do it anyway. That’s how it’s gonna work. So if 24 teams makes them more money, that’s what they’re gonna do.”
Dellenger’s reporting points the other way on the money. The leagues and their schools won’t get many more dollars from the new contract, he wrote. ESPN has reported that the network is paying around an extra $350 million for the expanded postseason.
The new format eliminates conference championship games, which costs about $200 million in revenue, so the conferences are left to split roughly $150 million more. If that is divided under the current CFP formula, Big Ten and SEC schools stand to receive about $2.5 million to $3 million more a year.
ACC and Big 12 schools would get $1 million to $1.5 million, and the rest goes to Notre Dame, UConn and Group of Six programs. None of that counts the economic boost of hosting extra playoff games on campus.
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Dellenger reported that the expansion is about access instead. With the top rosters this season costing $40 million or more, coaches and athletic directors are looking for more ways into the national title chase.
Last season, a nine-win Texas team finished three spots out of the field, and a 10-win Notre Dame team finished one spot out. Dellenger also noted a theory, which he cautioned may not pan out, that more access will mean more job security for coaches.
Jimenez followed up by asking about a Group of Six playoff. Drinkall called that “just FCS football” and turned back to the top of the sport: “It’s not really the Power 4. It’s the Power 2. … We get gaslit pretty hard into believing what we have to, to justify changing what they need to make money.”
This article originally appeared on Pro Football Network.
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