The morning after the College Football Playoff selection committee ranked his undefeated team No. 12 behind four Power 5 teams with multiple losses, Coastal Carolina coach Jamey Chadwell gathered the Chanticleers on their stadium field and asked them a question.
"All right, who's disappointed?" he said.
A majority of players raised their hands.
"Coach, we don't understand why," one player said, according to Chadwell.
The Chanticleers were realistic about their goals -- "I knew the playoffs were no shot," Chadwell said -- but they had finished the season 11-0 and clung to the possibility of earning a spot in a New Year's Six bowl.
When that door slammed shut, it was the latest example of a process that elicited forceful objections from fans and prompted some conference commissioners to question the process.
While criticism of the committee's weekly rankings has become as traditional as tailgating, the bizarre, coronavirus-ravaged seventh season of the playoff bolstered the backlash. The inconsistent reasoning applied to the rankings each week was magnified because of unbalanced schedules. Not even a pandemic, though, could overturn college football's balance of power. Many have grown weary of the same teams and conferences repeatedly being chosen and are convinced Group of 5 teams will never have a chance as long as there are only four semifinalists. While the CFP insists those teams have a realistic path, it's becoming more difficult for fans to believe it unless they see it. And any hope that this unprecedented season would provide an opportunity for something different was quickly extinguished.
No one was more vocal than American Athletic Conference commissioner Mike Aresco, who saw his league's Cincinnati Bearcats go 9-0 only to finish No. 8 in the final rankings, one spot behind 8-3 Florida.
"I can't call it a playoff anymore," Aresco said. "It's a P5 invitational. The fact that Cincinnati kept routinely getting jumped by the flavor of the week -- whether it was Iowa State, Oklahoma, Georgia, whether it was Florida not falling after the LSU game -- the question really becomes, is this being decided on the field? Is it just a beauty contest?"
Chadwell was asking himself the same thing.
Despite a résumé that included two wins against CFP top-20 teams (No. 16 BYU and No. 19 Louisiana), the Chanticleers were left looking up at a three-loss Iowa State team that lost at home to Louisiana -- a team Coastal Carolina beat. Louisiana, meanwhile, finished nine spots lower than the Cyclones in spite of its convincing 31-14 head-to-head win on Sept. 12.
"What do you say? It's a punch to your gut," Chadwell said. "We were going to our first bowl game, which was awesome for us, but it almost felt like it was a consolation prize because you were an 'eye test' away from being in a New Year's Six."
Instead, it was an uncharted path to an all-too familiar result. But will it lead to change?
"More and more people -- not just fans, but the 10 commissioners and Notre Dame -- who have a vote in the matter are saying, 'It's time to look at expansion,'" Mountain West commissioner Craig Thompson said. "Does that mean two years from now? Does it mean after the current 12-year contract expires? I think it's somewhere between there. I think we could accommodate expansion before the 12-year contract expires -- one man's opinion."
SEC commissioner Greg Sankey is willing to listen, but he isn't ready to expand the playoff.
"I think four has achieved the objectives established and has continued to work well even in this environment," Sankey said. " ... Others can initiate the conversation at this point."
No one knows what it will look like beyond the 2025-26 season when the 12-year contract expires, but ESPN spoke with the most powerful people in the sport, including College Football Playoff executive director Bill Hancock and all 10 FBS commissioners and Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick, to get a sense of where the future of the College Football Playoff stands coming off its most challenging year.
'You've got to figure out what it's going to look like'
Change happens slowly in college athletics, but it might be coming.
While no decisions have been made, members of the CFP's management committee had been "very engaged" in conversations about the playoff's future before the coronavirus pandemic changed priorities, and they will continue to explore expanding the four-team format with the hopes of having a plan before it's time to renegotiate bowl and television contracts.
The playoff has concluded its seventh season with Alabama beating Ohio State, leaving five years on the current contract for decision-makers to determine what's next.
Hancock called the current playoff system "the best way ever devised for determining the champion of college football," and that while the conference commissioners will continue to have discussions, no change is "imminent."
Many people will be involved in any final decision, but it starts with the CFP management committee, which is composed of the 10 FBS commissioners and Swarbrick.
"We were already very engaged," Swarbrick said. "You have to be, given the flight path here of the broadcast agreement and the bowl agreements. You've got to figure out what it's going to look like in the future. Not because of any special problem or concern, but that's just what you have to do."
While the Group of 5 commissioners will continue to advocate for access, they do so understanding that sweeping changes won't happen without the support of their Power 5 peers and a general consensus within the group. It's unclear whether there has to be a unanimous agreement to expand, but they'd like to get as close to it as possible before presenting a plan to the presidents, who would take their recommendation very seriously.
"This has been an enterprise that's worked with everybody agreeing to do things," said Mid-American Conference commissioner Jon Steinbrecher. "If you want everybody's property involved, you need everybody to be in agreement."
Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby said he "wouldn't dismiss" changing the playoff format before the end of the contract but added, "It would take a lot of people outside of the 10 commissioners and Jack Swarbrick and our presidential representatives" to make it happen.
"This has implications that go way, way beyond the number of teams we have," added Bowlsby, who declined to say what his preferred format would be. "We have five years left on contracts with eight bowls. We have contracts with sites out through '24-'25. This is not likely to be a rapid transformation, even if everybody was unanimous about feeling good about doing something different, which I don't think is the case right now."
Typically, the management committee meets every year at the national championship game, along with the CFP's board of managers, which includes 11 university presidents and chancellors. This year's meetings will be held virtually because many board members aren't traveling to Miami due to the ongoing pandemic.
If it's safe to meet in person this spring, the annual CFP meetings in April would present a greater opportunity for the commissioners to discuss the format at length -- and during a time when the emotions from the season aren't as high.
"This is not a Zoom call discussion," Swarbrick said.
Sankey said he doesn't feel pressured to act quickly.
"The presidents will ultimately be at the end of the decision-making chain," he said. "Every year, we're going to have to go through an evaluation and a learning process that's going to inform how we move forward."
Similarly, Hancock urges patience.
"There was no road map for anyone this year," the CFP leader said. "But I know this: Perspective will be important after a season that was played in the long shadow of a pandemic."
'I think expansion is inevitable'
Eleven different teams have filled a total of 28 semifinal spots, but four teams -- Alabama and Clemson at six apiece, and Ohio State and Oklahoma at four each -- account for 20 of those appearances.
Monday's national championship game between Alabama and Ohio State will mark the first time since the CFP's inaugural season that the title game features a team from outside the SEC not named Clemson.
Thompson, of the Mountain West, said the commissioners always believed two main factors would drive "the impetus to expand": if the same conferences are routinely left out of the playoff and the same teams are repeatedly getting in.
"And we've seen that a lot," he said. "I think expansion is inevitable. These things take time."
As the AAC's Aresco added, "It's gotten stale. It absolutely has gotten stale. It's the same teams over and over. Now, would they win anyway? There might be an upset here and there. There could be that game, that one night when somebody plays great and upsets somebody."
Aresco said an eight-team playoff could work and that he believes it will be discussed.
"I think it has to happen because there's just too much dissatisfaction with the current system," he said. "Ultimately, I think there will be support for it because not only would the G5 obviously want it, but clearly there are P5 guys being left out who would like a shot."
The Pac-12 champion has been left out five times in seven seasons, with Oregon and Washington the only teams to represent the conference for a 1-2 record and no national titles. Before the Pac-12 season began in late September, commissioner Larry Scott suggested expanding the field to eight teams this season, given the inconsistent scheduling caused by the pandemic.
There wasn't enough support for it at the time, in large part because of the timing but also because of a fear of not being able to go back to the current system.
"Our athletic directors and football programs are focused on improving every year and investing in success," Scott said. "We are heading in the right direction when we look at the quality of our coaching, the number of elite players we produce and send to the NFL, our recruiting, and play on the field week in and week out. Our league has both depth and elite teams, and we are confident that we will be back in the CFP."
'We really need to be thoughtful'
While every commissioner interviewed for this story acknowledged the need to determine a plan, whether or not the playoff expands, not everyone was willing to say publicly where they stand on it. But there is clearly a difference of opinions.
Thompson said "eight would work," but "all kinds of models should be placed on the table."
The MAC's Steinbrecher said he would be interested in exploring an eight-team model but added that a decision has to be made with "the whole enterprise" in mind, meaning the regular season, the bowl system and the playoff.
"An overriding concern most involved would have is, we need to make sure we keep college football's regular season the most valuable collegiate sports property there is," Steinbrecher said.
Not even Sun Belt commissioner Keith Gill is quite yet sold on expansion. He said his more immediate concern is finding consistency from the committee and knowing "what the standards are." He said he hopes the commissioners will be "trying to identify ways to make sure there's a better process."
"I just think we need to look at it and study it," Gill said. "A lot of the ways I hear expansion talked about, I don't know that that necessarily solves the Coastal/Cincinnati issue. If there's just one spot, that means one goes in and one doesn't. What I would say is, I am certainly a proponent of access, but I don't know that I necessarily know what that structure looks like. I really want to talk about it because I want to make sure when we do it, it really does open up access and there really is opportunity."
It's hard to imagine any real change happening without the support of the SEC and Sankey, who is arguably the most powerful person in the room. He said he is willing to listen but that he wants everyone to remember the original principles that guided their decision-making process when the playoff was implemented.
"While there's plenty of opinion and commentary present now, my answer is yes, I listen to that, absolutely," Sankey said. "But I also will go back to the principles established at the onset of the playoff and want to compare the commentary, the insight, the evaluation and the learning almost seven times since against those principles, and that's how we'll make wise decisions to move forward."
Swarbrick declined to say where he stands on expansion but said he wouldn't suggest any changes to the current protocol for determining the top four teams and cautioned about extrapolating too much from this unusual season.
"So the question of how have the selection procedures and process served us, I think pretty well outside this really unusual year, which I don't know is fair to judge them by," he said. "I don't think the focus is method of selection. That takes you down a really difficult path. Focus has to continue to be, what does it look like in the future? What's the format?"
Swarbrick added that the discussions have to start with what's actually possible, and he pointed out the calendar is "really a driving factor here, big-time." It's also extremely unlikely anyone is willing to give up their conference championship games.
"You've got to be very attentive to how the NFL postseason calendar works," he said. "You've got to carve out your space relative to that. There's the broadcast calendar, generally. There's the importance of the structure that currently exists, when football season starts and when conference championships are played. You just have less schedule opportunities than people might think."
Like Sankey, Big Ten commissioner Kevin Warren said regardless of the system and how many teams are in it, there will always be critics and those who believe teams were slighted.
"I don't think expansion is the solution," Warren said, "but at some point in time, expansion is going to be addressed because there's been so much talk of it."
Before making a final decision on expansion, Warren said there needs to be a formal study of its impact both on and off the field.
"So many people, in general, think more is better, but I think we really need to be thoughtful as we consider any expansion," Warren said. "In talking to many college football athletes and coaches, by the time the season ends for the teams that have played in the semifinals or the national championship, they're exhausted. It's been a long year. We need to remember these young men are not professionals. They're amateurs."
Cincinnati coach Luke Fickell said playing a couple of more games is feasible.
"I think what we saw this year is, you can play into December and it's not as big of a factor," he said. "Meaning that one more game or two more games I don't know is going to make or break what kids are doing and all of a sudden turn them into just athletes and not students."
Aresco, who has been the most vocal of the commissioners this season, is already planning ahead.
"If this thing expands," Aresco said, "obviously we'll be out there fighting to get one of the automatic bids."
And then teams can start arguing about spots 8 and 9.