The CFP Expansion That Wasn’t

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0:12Congratulations! You made the Varsity podcast. My name is John Arand and I am Pups, a sports correspondent and host of this pod. And today, Nicole Auerbach returns to the pod. Nicole is the lead college football insider for NBC Sports. And we're going to spend a lot of time today on the college football playoff. what's working, what's not, what's going to change, and when. Nicole is one plugged-in college football analyst, and I'm pretty sure you're going to like this one. But before I get to Nicole, today is Wednesday, December 24th, and here's what I'm watching right now. Today, I'm focused on traditional linear television, broadcasters, cable channels.

0:56These guys have spent a decade suffering through terrible headlines and declining businesses. Court cutting has cut into their distribution dramatically. I mean, ESPN used to be in more than 100 million homes, and now it's in a fraction of that. Traditional television still matters, of course. Leagues still prioritize broadcast channels for their biggest games. They still amass the most viewers by far. But this trend towards streaming, well, it's unmistakable. But if there's a silver lining in all this, we may start to see it come into play next year. You see, Michael Morris is a respected analyst with Guggenheim Securities, and he is particularly bullish about Fox's position in the business.

1:40Yes, Fox, the one TV channel that has moved the slowest when it comes to developing streaming services. And the reason Morris likes Fox comes down to two reasons. The World Cup, which is going to bring in tons of advertising revenue next year. in the NFL, which is going to give the network cost certainty well into the next decade. Roger Goodell and the NFL are going to open up their media rights deals next year or the year after, and the league, which rates higher than anything else on TV, is going to break the bank. So here's what Morris wrote. While we acknowledge that NFL rights will likely be renewed at higher costs when the current contracts expire, we believe that incremental cost will be manageable given Fox's demonstrated ability to monetize NFL content through both advertising and distribution revenue.

2:33So while it seems like everyone has written television's obituary for years now, I just wanted to take a second and acknowledge that good old-fashioned TV is still in a pretty good place. Now let's get to Nicole Arbach. Nicole, I'm so happy to have you on this pod because you and I, we have something in common. We're like two of the biggest Bears fans this year. I'm from DC. You're from New Jersey. You know, just last weekend, the quarterback who went to my high school threw a game winning touchdown pass to a receiver who went to my college how can I not root for these guys I find them very likable too I mean like I always feel like when the NFL draft comes around like I'm handing off my favorite players and be like don't mess them up you know so like when someone like Caleb Williams and you're like oh you know is he gonna be great is he gonna be good uh actually gets with like a coach and a staff that like are unlocking things in him I think it's awesome so uh it was pretty crazy you know my husband was at the game bunch of people I knew were at the game and they just said like the entire city was insane like that whole night afterwards I was of course watching the college football playoff but the city of Chicago yeah well they do say when when Chicago does well the NFL does well because it's such a big TV market it's such a big media market and they've been so dormant for so long that uh that it's kind of fun to to watch but I I did actually did not have you on here to talk about Caleb Williams and the Chicago Bears.

4:10We are in the middle of the college football playoffs. We just got done with the first round of the CFP. Give it a report card. Kind of boring. I hate to say it that way, but it's not just because of the two games involving group of five teams, which I'm sure we're going to talk about. They weren't great games. And listen, And we're still improving from last year when you had four lopsided games in the first round. But, you know, a 10 to 3 game for Miami and Texas A &M wasn't that great. You know, the Alabama-Oklahoma game was super exciting because obviously Oklahoma blew a 17-point lead. But it was still a really sloppy game, a lot of missed tackles.

4:54We saw a lot of missed field goals this weekend. My pal Joshua Perry, who I work with at NBC Sports, he would tell you that the field is too big. So there are teams that are just like not that great that are in it. And that's part of the reason you're not getting great games in the first round. But I would argue as long as we get greater games as we go, and it looks like we're going to have great quarters and great semifinals, I'm fine with it. But, you know, I do think it didn't have a ton of buzz. And I think also partially because, you know, that first round is up against the NFL. I just think it's really hard for those games to break through anyway.

5:29And then there weren't really like, oh my God, I got to go to my TV. It's a must watch moment or crazy quarterback performance. It just wasn't those kinds of games. Yeah. I've been on this train for a while. Like I thought the pinnacle for me was the BCS where people just pick the top two teams and you generally had a good game. And then they, they expanded it to four and the semis were generally blowouts and to lead into a good game. Uh, and now of course the first round is, uh, uh, and it's not even just the group of five. It's just teams that now have to play on opposing campuses, which makes it even more difficult.

6:06So my question to you, because you cover this so well, is expansion certain to happen? So I don't think it's certain to happen next year. As you know, the Big Ten and the SEC need to agree on any format changes. And the Big Ten doesn't like adding extra at-large spots, extra decisions by the selection committee. They want that multiple AQ and some of these bigger brackets, like 20, 24 team ideas. So and the SEC doesn't want those. Right. So those two don't agree. It's not going to change. It would just stay at the 12 the way that it is right now. I don't think that that necessarily solves the problems that we are talking about, about lopsided games or things like that either.

6:48Because, again, you're like when you're talking about bubble teams, these are flawed teams. These are like high variance teams. You don't necessarily know what you're going to get out of them. A lot of these teams didn't participate in championship weekend. So they've had a little bit of a long layoff between games as well. And then, of course, you had the two group of five teams because of the ACC tiebreaker problem. So there were just like a lot of things, I think, that were stacked up against it this year. But I do think obviously there's a lot of people who are pushing to expand it to 16 with five AQ spots.

7:19And then obviously you still have the Big Ten idea floating around here that would kind of limit what the selection committee does. Because the conferences themselves would be saying, here's how we're sending our four champions or four representatives or two representatives or three representatives, whatever that might be. So help me out here. What's the sort of timetable and likelihood that we're going to have with this? Well, that was great. That was like a two-part question there. The likelihood and the timetable. Okay, let's start with timetable. uh as you know the cfp loves setting deadlines and then just blowing past them and then creating a new deadline it's one of my favorite parts i there was the two years where they like proposed the 12 team playoff and then they finally approved it i sat outside of god it had to have been like at least 12 meetings where they would be like is this a deadline is this when when do you have to decide this thing and they uh would like push it push it push it push it so they have given themselves to the end of January to decide if they're going to change anything for next fall for the 2026 season.

8:23That's to get through the CFP this year. The commissioners always meet the weekend of the title game in person. So they'll do all of that. But again, unless Tony Petiti, the Big Ten commissioner is changing his mind, I don't necessarily think that, you know, that's going to happen. There was a lot of angst around the selection this year and the process. I was Part of that, I was very vocal in the issues that I had with the way that it all went down. I think there's questions of, hey, are they going to keep doing weekly TV rankings and the show and all of those things? But again, I think that will be the next checkmark, right?

8:58The end of January, if the commissioners are going to change anything. Obviously, everything is a negotiation and there's compromises. But again, like the Big Ten has not been supportive of these at-large heavy models because they, first of all, like, again, they're a top heavy league right now. So they got three teams in and they're all still in. And they're all in the quarters, multiple title contenders of that group. But the SEC supports the bigger field with a lot of at-large teams because their teams are like right behind and like would be the bunch of the teams that would get in if you expanded a few more spots.

9:31So that's why you have, you know, them supporting this, their coaches, obviously. very vocal in supporting more at large spots, also with new metrics that are supposed to favor SEC schedules with strength of schedule metrics. And then the Big 12 and the ACC have also expressed support for extra at large spots as well. So we'll see. I think, again, end of January is the point to look at, but I'm not super confident that we're going to see changes for 2026. I think that these are kind of larger issues about where college football is going, what you want to prioritize, what you want to incentivize, that probably need to be dealt with as they kind of try to reimagine this thing and decide if they do want it to go a little bit bigger or if they do want to look at AQs or different formats, are conference championship games going to keep sticking around?

10:17Like, there's just a lot of questions, I think, that kind of all need to be answered together. You know what drives me crazy? You mentioned this. The idea that we can't have this show, that weekly show about the rankings, it just makes me laugh. Like, that's the problem. We had a show that had rankings each week, and then that showed teams going up and down. And sure, it doesn't make any sense. That's why rankings doesn't make sense. But the idea that we're going to kill that show is that I don't think even was highly rated. I think ESPN would be happy to kill it. You know, why not? But it's looking at the wrong thing, in my opinion.

10:57Well, but here's the thing. I think that some of the angst and some of the backlash this year would have actually been avoided if you didn't have it. Because I think if we went into selection Sunday and we were just kind of saying, okay, here's the collection of bubble teams. You know, you've got Alabama, you've got Miami, you've got Notre Dame and you've got BYU. And like, these are the teams. Okay, well, you know, Notre Dame could definitely be behind Miami. Like they could definitely be left out because they lost to them this year. You wouldn't have like that backlash to it happening because you'd be like, okay, yeah, that was like a possibility.

11:27That was like in the realm of possibilities. Instead, you see them ahead of them for five weeks. And so I think then it feels like the rug gets pulled out from under them. Then you have Notre Dame opting out of their bowl game and Pete Pavacqua's, you know, kind of media blitz about all of this. So I think you do avoid that dynamic. Again, you probably could end up with the exact same bracket. But I do think maybe Notre Dame people would be like, OK, well, that was a possibility all along. So I would get rid of the weekly rankings. That's just me. Now, you know Pete Pavacqua. Did he hire you at NBC?

11:59No, we did overlap briefly, but yeah, not, not directly. Pete, of course, is the athletic director at Notre Dame. And I, I've, I've covered him for a long time. I, you know, back in his PGA of America days, watching him go on that press tour that was so outside of what I know of Pete and his personality. Like how surprised were you that he sort of went on, on that almost scorched Earth tour that he went on after NBC was not NBC. Notre Dame was snubbed. I was really surprised. I do think, you know, nowadays everyone is really like hyper focused on like their campus, their conference, and how things are impacting them.

12:46And you have all these constituents that want you to fight for yourself. Like it kind of reminded me a couple years ago when Florida State got left out after being undefeated ACC champions. This was last year, the 14 playoff. And people got on Jim Phillips for like not fighting harder publicly. And it's just like part of the process now that that final month of the season, there's so much politicking. And you kind of do expect these suits to like get up there and fight. But yeah, it was like a multi-day event for Pete to go fight for Notre Dame. And again, I think you probably did need to be out there to explain the bowl opt out, which, again, is part of like this idea, this feeling of like the rug got pulled out from under you because of those weekly rankings, because of the process.

13:30And I personally, as someone who has a lot of issues with the CFP selection process, I don't mind when people are like railing on that or talking about like the inconsistencies there. But yeah, it went on for multiple days. I think people were even wondering, you know, how toxic the relationship was going to be between Notre Dame and the ACC coming out of that because he was literally taking aim at the ACC's tweets that were comparing Miami and Notre Dame's resumes and saying like that they felt attacked by that. So there were so many interesting dynamics because I remember being surprised the ACC was doing that with a partial member and a member that all of their other sports are in the ACC.

14:07But then also, like, if you are Notre Dame, you're not shocked that the ACC is going to bat for an ACC full football member. Because, by the way, they don't make any money if Notre Dame makes the playoff or advances. They make money if Miami does and Miami advances. So it was just such an interesting dynamic. And we don't always get to see it all play out publicly. Like that's kind of some of the boardroom stuff that you and I talk to people about. And so that got kind of messy pretty quickly. And then I think people were wondering, hey, does that signal five years from now, you know, are they going to look for a different home or try to figure out, you know, a different way to schedule or where their Olympic sports could be, et cetera, et cetera.

14:44But to me, it felt like a lot of venting at that, that week after the selection. Well, that's interesting. You say that because I personally do believe that that relationship is in trouble. Like it's not certain to end, but if Notre Dame can find an elegant way out, I think it would take it. Do you think that this is irreparable? So Pete actually got asked that, right? And he was like, everything can be healed. All relationships can be healed with time and stuff like that. I take it more as a little bit. That's the Pete that I know. Like it can all be healed. Yeah, the tone down, like everyone, kumbaya, we can all figure this out.

15:25Um, so I, I'm, I'm mostly with you where I think that this is one of those things that you're just not going to really be able to like fully move past. Now, this is also a conference that had two schools sue the ACC and like kept them in the fold and figured out compromises and ways to restructure revenue sharing. So, you know, again, I think everyone in the ACC is there until 2030. The exit fees drop. Things change around then. That's when the Big Ten's deal is up. The NCAA, March Madness deals are up. The CFP deals are up. The SEC, everything is aligned for the end of the decade for seismic changes if there's going to be another round of them.

16:07So to me, it just speaks to Notre Dame being like, okay, yeah, we've got some issues with our relationship with this conference. A little bit like, hey, who else is out there? Just kind of like putting out a flare to see what that looks like. But again, I think it's an interesting situation. Like they really value independence. I've said that they can stay independent if three things are true. One is that they're able to have a full schedule the way that they want. And that's partially why they need that ACC deal, because it helps them schedule in the later part of the year where everyone's in conference play.

16:36Playoff access, which, again, we know is protected. And there are assurances that they can do it, but they feel slighted with the way it went down this year. And then enough money to compete. Like they kind of call it an independence tax, where it's like, well, we're not making as much money as we would in the Big Ten or the SEC, but we keep all of our other unique aspects. So we're good with it. So I think, you know, those are the three things. Now, again, if people are going to make it more difficult to schedule them, if it's going to be more difficult to get into the CFP, then you're kind of putting like a crunch on Notre Dame and they would have to, you know, take it more seriously to look at different conferences.

17:13But like if you're the Big Ten or the SEC, you're not taking Notre Dame unless they're a full member in everything, in football. And so that's where, you know, I think it gets interesting. If there is a squeeze, if the Big Ten or SEC go to like 10 conference games and it's harder to get games on the schedule. We already know, you know, USC, that's on hiatus right now. Do those things apply pressure to Notre Dame and eventually, maybe by the end of the decade, get them to be thinking more about joining a conference? Let's stick with that for a second. Let's take a quick break, but I want to come back because I think what happened with Notre Dame and USC speaks to everything that you just talked about right there, Nicole.

17:52So let's take a quick break and come right back on that one.

18:13Prediction markets are undermining state authority and targeting teenagers with no safeguards. They take the profits without the responsibility. It's time for the CFTC to do its job and stay out of sports betting. Learn more at americangaming.org slash prediction markets. The NFL playoffs are here and Heed the Call NFL podcast with Dan Hanses and Mark Sessler is your destination for coverage of every round from wildcard weekend to Super Bowl Sunday. He the Call covers every game, every storyline, everything that matters, and we have fun. No fake hot takes, just entertaining football talk from your favorite buds at the bar.

18:49Wait, Mark, which bar? Well, like the typical neighborhood bar where the witty sports guys at a place like that. Ah, I like that. Follow and listen to He the Call wherever you get your podcasts. Well, Nicole, we were talking about Notre Dame and if it can stay independent. And one thing that you mentioned is, you know, can it continue to schedule good games? And that's where on Monday, the Notre Dame-USC game, how long has that been going on? I think they missed a couple of years during the war in the 1940s, you know. But it's been a longstanding tradition that they played each other. And USC found it's in a Big Tens conference that has 18 members.

19:33it's traveling cross country several times. I looked it up. They've lost three of the four times that they've traveled cross country, including to such powerhouses like the university of Maryland and college park, for goodness sakes. And the, the idea that Notre Dame is going to be able to schedule quality games against a big 10 school or an sec school, or frankly, even an AC school, ACC school or big 12 school. Well, it seems like it's going to be getting harder as all these other conferences expand. Well, and it depends, you know, how many conference games they're going to have, too, because that applies some of that pressure.

20:14You know, they just announced a series of BYU, which I actually think will be awesome. So that's what's replacing USC for the next two years. It's a home and home, which is kind of funny because they were supposed to meet in the Pop-Tarts Bowl. So everyone's just like, all right, well, you want to play them, but just like without the sprinkles, which I would prefer the sprinkles, but that's just me. So I think, you know, you are going to be able to find teams that will play them. They have a long, they just scheduled Clemson, which again, it's kind of speaks to the ACC, like those two schools being like, we want to make sure playing the good teams in the ACC, like that these are blockbuster games.

20:48But I think it's a valid question of, you know, who is going to schedule you and what are they willing to do? And that is part of the calculus here for USC. This has been a very interesting story to track all fall. And, you know, I talked to a lot of people on both sides of it in the lead up to the USC Notre Dame game this year and in recent days as well. And, you know, it comes down to this. Like USC, because of the travel, because, you know, of the teams that they're going to play and like the caliber of teams, they wanted to play this game early in the year. ideally like week zero week zero to week like week three before they started the big 10 travel they felt like it was going to make it harder to a win big 10 games down the stretch when you add a big non-conference game like that um but also harder to beat notre dame when you're doing that in the middle of all of this travel and everything that's grueling and then notre dame of course wants to play it later in the year there's more at stake that's when it's traditionally been played either like in mid-october late october and then the very end of the season and again notre dame needs teams to play late in the year when everyone else is playing conference games.

21:56So you do need schools and conferences willing to work with you on that so that they do have some big games late in November. So that's kind of where it was standing. Now, in the last couple of days, USC is also saying, well, with the way the CFP process is going, a late game, losing a game late could be really, really damaging with the way that like people are able to make up for early losses, show the committee that they're a different team. And then also, you know, USD stance here is that like, they didn't know about the memorandum of understanding with the CFP that allows Notre Dame to get in.

22:32If it's a 12 team bracket, if they're in the top 12, if it's 14 in the top 14, et cetera, et cetera. So they're also worried like in the very specific scenario where like they could beat them, but then get knocked out by them. If they get displaced by them, the way that JMU displaced Notre Dame, like it's, You have to get in the weeds a little bit. But that's the USC stance on this. And I will tell you, like the Big Ten and people I've talked to, like that was communicated. And the memorandum was communicated to everyone last year. So people knew that there was a factor here where Notre Dame had these protections to make the field.

23:05But that's kind of weirdly part of this. There's like a lot of kind of like disputing and like contradictory information that's coming out right now. but ultimately like Notre Dame wanted to do a long longer deal they wanted to play later in the season and USC didn't want to do that so it's on hiatus for a few years and it really sucks for college football like every time we've had realignment or rivalries get lost kind of due to realignment um it just takes the sport away more from like it's history it's traditions a lot of regional rivalries um and then you kind of have to wait for people to bring them back like we got the backyard brawl back after a long break and like the border war and things like that but it sucks when you lose it.

23:47And especially for something that had been played almost every year for a century. Yeah, yeah, no doubt. This is an unanswerable question, which I'm going to ask anyway, which is if Notre Dame does go to a conference, what conference it would be? And the idea is like, they're of course a Big Ten school. They're right there in Indiana, right? And it makes a lot of sense there. There appears to be bad blood. Would you describe it as bad blood? But Notre Dame has made consistently decisions to move away from the Big Ten, which opens up the SEC. And I can't imagine that they would want to join a conference that's not one of those two big conferences.

24:32and then just as an adjunct to that like and this is for the last segment that that we're on are these even going to be conferences back when when when when Notre Dame makes a decision or is it going to be like we want to be part of that super 38 teams or 42 or who knows what that everybody talks about yeah well so I think I agree with you like that they were much like a cultural fit for the Big Ten so that's why we've always when you ever have this conversation which Notre Notre Dame fans hate, by the way, like they hate the idea of, oh, do you have to join a conference or everyone else thinks you have to join a conference?

25:07Because, again, it's like very core to their identity. And again, as long as they can schedule, they can make the playoff and they have enough money to compete, they feel good. But, yeah, the Big Ten feels like a much like more of a cultural fit than the SEC. The SEC has also, even with its additions, been very like regional, like all those they always talk about, like all their states are contiguous. So they're still very like Southeast, even though they're now into Texas as well in Oklahoma. So that's where I am. But again, I think if they're going to join a conference and if a conference is going to add them, they would need to be a full football member.

25:41So that's like a big ask. So it's very much a what if if we get to that point. And again, the thing I would track is like, you know, the playoff access and like if the conferences are going to, you know, I mean, the SEC is going to nine conference games. people are going to like be very cautious about how they're scheduling non-conference games. So if life gets more difficult for them to schedule the big boys in the sport, maybe then they feel more pressure and are more interested in joining a conference. To your point about like, are we headed to a super leagues? I always say that like, we're already kind of there because you do have an 18 team, Big 10 and a 16 team SEC, 16 in the Big 12 and 17 in the ACC.

26:23see, like, all of that is kind of already how it's happening. Like, we already can go through how many teams in the CFP this year and last year, like, are in the Big Ten and the SEC. We know that they have, you know, weighted voting and certain powers and different things. Like, they're able to get a lot of what they want within the current system. So that's kind of why I say, like, we're already in a Super League era. We just, it's not exactly how we thought it would be or that there wasn't, like, a formal breakaway. I think people are going to continue to throw out those ideas. You know, I think I personally think like, you know, if you restructure the CFP itself a little bit, they could lead and kind of run more of college football because they controlled postseason.