MID-AMERICAN CONFERENCE commissioner Jon Steinbrecher was driving to Western Michigan's season opener at Michigan State when he received an urgent text message from University at Buffalo president Satish Tripathi.
"Call me."
Steinbrecher pulled over so his wife could drive, got out his laptop and called Tripathi, one of 11 university presidents and chancellors whose historic, unanimous vote on Sept. 2 will expand the four-team College Football Playoff to a 12-team field in 2026 -- if not sooner. Steinbrecher had already prepared the schools in his conference for the possibility of playoff expansion, but on that Friday afternoon, more than a year of speculation became reality.
During a Zoom meeting that day, which lasted just shy of an hour, the CFP's board of managers fast-tracked a process that had sputtered and stuttered through back-to-back tumultuous summers of conference realignment and leadership changes at the highest level. Weary of waiting for the commissioners to put aside their political posturing and overcome mistrust that became prevalent with conference realignment, the 11 presidents and chancellors representing all 10 FBS conferences and Notre Dame accomplished what the commissioners could not -- unanimity for a 12-team format.
After learning the details over the phone from Tripathi, Steinbrecher hit send on an email to his conference schools confirming the biggest change to the sport's postseason since the end of the BCS.
"I thought going into that meeting there was a strong likelihood they were going to approve it," Steinbrecher said. "We've really not been that far apart. I think they sensed an opportunity."
The chain of command was telling, as the near-decade history of the CFP had details hashed out by the commissioners and approved by the presidents. But much had changed since an 8-3 vote in February, when the Big Ten, ACC and Pac-12 said no to expanding the playoff, and the presidents and commissioners jointly stated the CFP would remain at four teams for four more years. Led by Mississippi State president Mark Keenum, the group was incentivized to move quickly by learning it might still be possible for Atlanta and Miami to host an expanded playoff as soon as 2024 -- an opportunity that reopened the door to roughly $450 million in potential gross revenue.
While money can be a powerful motivator, so can change and peer pressure. The presidents met multiple times this summer with a new university president, Ohio State's Kristina Johnson, now representing the Big Ten. Following the pending additions of USC and UCLA, Big Ten commissioner Kevin Warren said the conference "softened" its stance on automatic qualifiers, which had been a sticking point in previous discussions. With each videoconference of the summer, the consensus began to grow.
"Instead of saying, 'It's inevitable that we are going to do this,' we are going to do this," said Keenum, the chair of the board. "We are the governing board, and we're making that decision -- this is what the future of the College Football Playoff will look like, and here's our desire to start it in 2024 if at all possible. We needed to give that message as clearly as we could to the commissioners."
The presidents ultimately rubber-stamped the same 12-team proposal that was made public in June 2021, but pushed the grunt work back to the commissioners.
"That was jet fuel for us to be able to get around the table," Warren said of the presidents' vote.
The CFP's management committee, composed of the 11 FBS commissioners and Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick, is meeting in person at the Big Ten offices in Rosemont, Illinois, this week -- their second in-person meeting this month. They will meet again in Dallas in late October, hoping to know by then if the playoff can expand early. Five on-campus focus groups have been created to give CFP officials feedback about logistics.
That the CFP is even reconsidering 2024 and 2025 is another sharp turn in what has played out publicly as a puzzling process. Now, the remaining drama -- when does the playoff actually expand? -- has to overcome the same bureaucracy, conference politics and commissioner infighting that forced the presidents to hijack the process.
THE TIMELINE OF the presidents' behind-the-scenes conversations was accelerated when the Big Ten rocked the sport in June by adding USC and UCLA for 2024. It became obvious the obstacles the Big Ten, ACC and Pac-12 commissioners had repeatedly outlined -- automatic qualifiers, the calendar, revenue sharing -- were either performative or frivolous.
"At some point," a source said, "the bulls--- starts to crumble."
SEC commissioner Greg Sankey was one of the authors of the original 12-team proposal along with Mountain West commissioner Craig Thompson, former Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby and Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick. Sankey spoke to reporters Sept. 8 following a CFP meeting at the DFW airport, where he said it shouldn't surprise anyone the presidents made the decision -- they have the ultimate authority over the playoff.
"In January, they said to us -- I don't know that we shared it widely -- but they were going to continue to meet and work," Sankey said. "And lastly, we would be kidding ourselves if the events of the summer didn't play a role."
This spring -- before the Big Ten announced its decision to add USC and UCLA, and before its billion-dollar media rights deal was done -- the CFP's board of managers held a private Zoom meeting to continue talking about expanding the playoff. No CFP staff was on the call, and no attorney, according to Keenum.
"We weren't unanimous at the end of the meeting," Keenum said, "but it was a good discussion."
Washington State president Kirk Schulz, a member of the CFP's board of governors who was on the call, said the presidents were initially hesitant about meeting, and the opening 30 to 40 minutes of the 90-minute videoconference were spent "venting a little bit and giving their opinions."
"And then what happens is we start to shift," he said, "where all of us maybe backed away from our initial stances on some things and acknowledged that if as a group we couldn't figure out some compromises, who were we going to expect to do that?"
While the SEC, Big Ten, Big 12, ACC and Pac-12 presidents own the room in power and wealth, the Group of 5 presidents, led in large part by SMU's Gerald Turner, played the role of mediator.
"They were really eager to say, 'Look, you guys are all fighting over this way too much. There's a lot of money and opportunity for student-athletes here, let's figure out a middle road,'" said Schulz of the Group of 5 presidents. "By the time we met the second time, it was amazing how many people went, yeah, the whole 12-team thing, we've gotta be there."
The second issue they tackled was automatic qualifiers, as the Big Ten had pushed hard for conference champions to be guaranteed a spot in the playoff.
"That was a point of contention before," Schulz said. "We just sort of said, 'Hey, people are going to have to take a little more middle-of-the-road perspective on this. Everybody's not gonna get what they want. But it was clear that everybody wanted us to expand the playoff. So that was also an area that I think as people stepped back a little bit, they said this is probably not worth falling on our sword over."
On Aug. 18, ESPN reported the Big Ten completed a new seven-year media rights agreement with Fox, CBS and NBC that is set to bring in more than $7 billion to the league. The Big Ten is projected to eventually distribute $80 million to $100 million per year to each of its 16 members.
"I think it probably motivated everybody to say stuff is changing really quickly, and if we want to see some additional stability within a sort of realignment world, getting an expanded playoff was certainly a key to that," Washington State's Schulz said. "And so I think that helps many of the presidents say, 'Hey, we need to get this done so we all know what that's going to look like. Because if you're in a 20-team conference, and there's a four-team playoff, that may not look as attractive as being in a smaller conference with that ability to maybe get there. Now, if it's an expanded playoff, and you know there's more slots available, then some of the realignment may make more sense."
The Big Ten also had a new president in the discussion, Ohio State's Johnson, who in May 2022, replaced retiring Penn State president Eric Barron as the Big Ten's representative on the CFP's board of managers. Johnson cast her Sept. 2 Zoom vote from "The Oval" on Ohio State's campus that sunny Friday afternoon as ESPN's College GameDay crew was setting up at nearby St. John Arena for the next day's game against Notre Dame.
"It seemed easy, actually," Johnson said of the historic meeting. "We were ready. I think it had been socialized enough that people felt that some of the concerns that were there in the past had been addressed. So we took our time, but no more than we needed to."
KEENUM AND CFP executive director Bill Hancock both remembered a phone conversation they had this summer around the time they were locking in Atlanta and Miami as host cities for the national championship game in 2025 and 2026. Hancock called Keenum with even bigger news that could unravel what seemed to be a done deal with the sites and dates.
Keenum said Hancock told him there was still "a window of opportunity" to expand the playoff to 12 teams before the current contract expires after the 2025 season.
"We have to act really quickly," Hancock said.
Keenum said he thought the same thing most everyone probably did: "Really? Really?"
"When we made the announcement back in the spring, that it's not going to happen before 2026, I think Bill really believed that," Keenum said. "It just didn't feel like we could logistically get it done. I think he's had conversations with individuals and some of these sites that have given him a bit of hope that we maybe could do it, and the willingness to be flexible with us. Let's at least give it a chance."
Schulz said it wasn't one moment that brought a sense of urgency -- consensus was achieved gradually over several months -- and Hancock had mentioned to the entire board at one point that if they waited too long, it would be impossible to expand the field sooner because they had already missed too many moving deadlines.
Last September, when the CFP talked to potential host cities for the final two years of the current contract, the CFP asked them to consider two dates in case they decided to expand the playoff: Jan. 6 or 20 for 2025, and Jan. 5 or 19 for 2026. Not every city in the mix was able to provide alternate dates, but Miami informally acknowledged the possibility.
On Aug. 15 -- the same day the CFP announced Miami would host the national title game on Jan. 5, 2026 -- Keenum led another videoconference with the rest of the board, this time armed with the knowledge that if they wanted to, the CFP could ask Atlanta and Miami to change the dates they just spent weeks preparing to make public.
"On that Zoom call was when we really pushed pretty hard," Keenum said. "This was the call we talked about, 'We have an opportunity to move. We need to do it.' I was very encouraged. That was without question the best meeting we had had on the subject. I think because of the timing and where we were -- the window of opportunity was fast closing -- but we still could not get an agreement among ourselves."
A change in the fate of the playoff came in part with a change in perspective on how to solve the problem. Instead of focusing on the current contract, which requires everyone who signed it to agree to change it, they committed to what the playoff would look like in 2026. The thinking was that if they could agree to what it should look like then, they should be able to work backward to try to implement it sooner.
The Pac-12 had always been in favor of a 12-team playoff in 2026, but commissioner George Kliavkoff said that when the commissioners voted in February, there was no distinction as to when they were going to implement it. Before Kliavkoff voted yes to a 12-team playoff in 2024 or 2025, the Pac-12 wanted answers about any changes to revenue distribution and the Rose Bowl, which is why the league didn't initially vote in favor of it.
The Pac-12 wanted assurance that if it were implemented sooner, the business terms of the current contract would remain the same.
"As time went on, I think what happened is the presidents said, the commissioners are all pretty set in their objections, things that don't work for a particular conference," Schulz said, "and at the end of the day, if the presidents could break loose and say, folks, we've agreed on these two items. We're going to toss it back to you all to work out the details on revenues and the bowls and Rose Bowl, Orange Bowl, that kind of stuff, that was kind of the reason that it worked. I don't think many of the commissioners had softened their stances on some of those things that were really important to them. I think it really took the presidents to just say, hey, let's check off the first two boxes here."
The ACC had voiced concerns about the health and welfare of the players in an expanded format, and requested a 365-day review of the college football and academic calendar. A proposed calendar has been circulated with significant changes, but hasn't been part of the CFP's discussions.
"We all report to people above us, and they can decide what they want to do," said ACC commissioner Jim Phillips at the Sept. 8 meeting in Dallas. "And certainly they felt that they wanted to do that. So now I think it's up to us to execute what they've asked us to do."
With 2026 the priority, the board decided to meet again in two weeks to take a formal vote and move forward, "one way or the other," Keenum said.
"I didn't realize the room had turned like it had, at least for that first meeting," one commissioner said.
Swarbrick said he "wasn't surprised" the presidents worked their way to unanimity.
"The presidents don't take up issues like that unless they know the outcome," he said. "That's sort of the way presidents work. They're consensus driven, and there are enough conversations in advance. Once I got a sense that they were going to take on the ultimate question, I was pretty sure they must have some agreement."
Multiple presidents who voted said any lingering concerns weren't about the format or playoff itself, it was the timing of the announcement.
"By the time you start voting, it was clear, these two things were going to pass," Schulz said. "At that point, nobody wanted to be the person who said, 'maybe we should wait a little bit longer on this' because everybody had felt that we waited long enough."
THERE IS A sense among the commissioners and presidents that figuring out the details in time for the start of the 2024 season is ambitious but not impossible, while 2025 seems more realistic. Nobody has given a definitive deadline -- at least not publicly -- probably because there were so many moving targets over the past year that even the national championship game deadline has since been rendered moot.
The commissioners have to discuss revenue shares and ticketing allocations for first-round games, and they need to see if the hotels and convention centers in the host cities can accommodate an expanded field earlier. They have to determine how the New Year's Six bowls will handle the rotation, as the four quarterfinal games and two semifinal games would be played in bowls. They would have to come to terms on a TV contract for the first-round games. (ESPN would retain control, through existing bowl and playoff deals, of the quarterfinals, semis and title game until the current contract expires following the 2025 season.)
Of the plethora of issues to untangle, though, the schedule of how the 12-team format will work looms as the biggest obstacle, according to several people in the room. It could essentially require a fundamental change in the sport's calendar.
At the Sept. 8 in-person meeting in Dallas, the commissioners began discussing options like starting the season a week earlier -- dubbed Week 0 -- which would move the conference championship games to Thanksgiving weekend.
It might not be feasible, but that would allow for the playoff to begin on the second Saturday of December, which would move Army-Navy to the first Saturday, where it has been before. The Army-Navy game might not be able to move, though, because it also has existing contracts with host cities and CBS. The commissioners ultimately must decide if they want to start the season earlier, start the playoff later or try to work around the NFL, which plays Saturday games in December and playoff games on Saturdays, Sundays and one Monday in January. The CFP may consider playing games on a Tuesday or Wednesday.
American Athletic conference commissioner Mike Aresco said the idea of moving the entire season back to start on Week 0 is "not a slam dunk," and the schedule is only one of several "tough issues in the room."
If the playoff is going to expand in time for the 2024 season, though, the commissioners likely need to determine that this fall. While this week's meetings at the Big Ten's headquarters are another pivotal step in the process, an Oct. 20 meeting in Dallas could be the one that determines it.
"Anything we do is subject to presidential approval," Swarbrick said, "so it would make sense that by mid-October, we can either tell them the major questions are answered or not."
Johnson said the presidents and chancellors are expecting to know "sooner than later" if 2024 will happen.
"When they're ready, then we'll certainly consider the proposal," she said. "So that's where we're at. It'd be nice if we can do it in 2024, but we'll see. They've been delegated the pen to figure out the details. There's the media rights, there's the logistics. There's sponsorship, revenue distribution. There's a lot of things, but they're also motivated. So I have a lot of faith in the commissioners."
Tempering public expectations for 2024 is also a part of the plan, as optimism was soaring when the 12-team format was first released over a year ago only to fizzle out after it was voted down in February.
"There's probably 100 issues to resolve," Swarbrick said. "And I'm not saying a lot of them are hard to resolve, but you know, you still have to do it. Work your way through it. Certainly the calendar is I would say the most significant, but it triggers a host of other things you have to decide -- ticket allocation, sponsorship and signage -- that just goes on and on."
The rankings of the teams will continue to be determined by the CFP selection committee, which will remain largely unchanged.
The four highest-ranked conference champions will be seeded one through four with each receiving a first-round bye. Teams seeded five through 12 will play each other in the first round on either the second or third weekend of December with the higher seeds hosting the lower seeds either on campus or at another site determined by the higher-seeded school. The quarterfinals and semifinals will be played in bowl games on a rotating basis, and the championship game will be at a neutral site, as it is under the current four-team format.
The only question now is when they'll get it.
"It may not start until 2026, and if it does, it does," Keenum said, "but at least we gave it one last shot."