ESPN Rejects Proposals for College Football Playoff Expansion

The current push to expand the College Football Playoff (CFP) has sparked a war between the sport’s largest and most powerful media entities.

Amid ongoing discussions this week, not exclusively to but having to do with the ever-present topic of playoff expansion. Yahoo! Sports’ Ross Dellenger published a story about a 14-member presidential “media” committee composed of former college football officials, coaches, media members, a Republican operative, at least one Trump campaign donor, and a New York Yankees executive.

Of most importance was news that this committee was pushing for a 24-team CFP format and doubling the size of the current 12-team field, and far greater than the proposed 16-team expansion that, up until now, has dominated most of the conversation.

The presidential committee’s 24-team proposal aligns with what the Big Ten has been publicly advocating for some time.

According to Dellenger’s article, the 24-team proposal has the approval of “at least three of the four power conference commissioners” and Notre Dame.

So, who is the mystery conference that opposes the idea?

No one knows for sure, but it doesn’t take too much sleuthing to deduce that the most likely dissenting conference is the SEC.

To be sure, Dellenger’s article even says as much: “ESPN executives have privately dismissed the notion (of a 24-team playoff).”

But why?

The answer can be found by following the money.

ESPN currently owns the broadcast rights for each game in the 12-team format through 2032. And if the playoff field were to expand to 14 teams, ESPN would hold the rights to those games as well. However, if the playoffs were to expand beyond 14 games, the broadcast rights to the additional games would hit the open market.

But ESPN’s primary college football partner, the SEC, has an incentive to keep the playoff field limited to 16 or fewer as well.

The SEC conference championship game has a current market value of $80 million. If the sport were to expand to 24 teams, not only would it dilute and undervalue the regular-season games, but the conference championship games would also be significantly devalued and, in all likelihood, would be done away with.

That’s an unacceptable outcome for the SEC and its commissioner, Greg Sankey. Sankey has indicated support for an expansion to 16 teams, which would leave ESPN with only two games it would not have the rights to.

But he has steadfastly refused any expansion beyond 16.

So, the stage for the battle is set: ESPN and its conference partner, the SEC, are dug in to prevent playoff expansion. Not motivated by love of the game or maintaining the integrity of the sport, but primarily to maintain their current monopoly on the power within the CFP.

And Fox Sports, and their conference partner, the Big 10, are dug-in on playoff expansion, for precisely the opposite reason: to break ESPN’s monopoly on the current CFP format. Is a 24-team field good for college football?

Absolutely, not.

But they’re going to do it because it makes sense financially.

Ultimately, the Big 10 and the SEC determine everything in college football. But whatever comes out of that internal media war, it will have a lot more to do with money than anything.