The battle to expand the College Football Playoff continues to roll on among the power brokers of the sport. After failing to reach any kind of unanimity in December, the conference commissioners are prepared to take another crack at it in the spring.
The commissioners will reconvene in the first week of March to discuss the issue, sources told Sports Illustrated’s Ross Dellenger. Among the obstacles still standing in the way include exactly how many teams to expand to, what format an expanded playoff would take and how the Rose Bowl complicates the matter even further.
When the group met in Las Vegas in December, a clear divide formed among the different leagues. The Big Ten and ACC were both in favor of a model that guarantees automatic berths to the Power 5 conference champions. The Pac-12, meanwhile, is on the fence about which format to support and would be open to either a 12- or eight-team model, with or without automatic qualifiers.
Everybody else, however, is in favor of the original 12-team proposal revealed over the summer, which would grant automatic berths to the six highest-ranked conference champions and completes the field with six at-large selections. The lack of an agreement puts the notion of expanding by 2024 or ’25 in serious jeopardy, so all eyes will be on what comes out of the latest round of discussion in the coming weeks.
