On the eve of Week 1 of the 2022 college football season, a group of school presidents and chancellors asserted their control over a College Football Playoff expansion process that at the time was dormant. The board of managers directed the CFP’s management committee (the 10 conference commissioners and Notre Dame’s athletic director) to figure out how to expand the Playoff by ’26 at the very latest (the season in which a new television agreement would take effect). The commissioners will meet again in Dallas on Thursday to continue the work and see how feasible it is to expand even earlier than that, and the optimism expressed in September about that possibility remains.
“We sort of never know until we get into the meetings what the end is going to be,” CFP executive director Bill Hancock says. “But I know the commissioners are working really hard to get to expand the Playoff in 2024. There’s a resolve in the room that I certainly wasn’t feeling a year ago.”
Hancock echoed comments made by ACC commissioner Jim Phillips to ESPN at his conference’s men’s basketball media day Oct. 12. There is often frustration from fans and media that it seems like progress is being made or discussed, only for the meetings to conclude without anything concrete being announced. Hancock cautions that this is all part of how it works.
