Pat Forde: The CFP Debate Is Really About Fear and Self-Preservation

MIRAMAR BEACH, Fla. — Mike Elko, Texas A&M coach and great American, put the College Football Playoff expansion debate in perfect framing Tuesday.

“There’s two sides to that conversation,” he said at the Southeastern Conference spring meetings. “There’s the good of college football, where we better be really careful. I don’t know why we’re trying to become a trophy sport. Then there’s self-preservation. And so if you really ask me on record, what does Mike Elko want? I want 40 [teams in the playoff] because then I’ll make it and then I won’t get fired.”

In point of fact, Elko’s Aggies made the 12-team CFP last season and would likely never need expansion to the absurd outer limits to be a contender. But Elko articulated the inherent conflict as the sport considers once again altering its postseason format—staying at 12 or expanding to 16 or (gah) 24.

What’s best for the sport as a whole is disconnected from what’s best for roughly 68 individual fiefdoms, and the millionaire athletic directors and coaches leading them. They want easy, even if easy undermines the best parts of college football.

“The cool thing about our sport is it has always been a challenge to get into the playoffs,” Elko said. “Every year there are good teams, whether it was four [from 2014 to ’23], whether it’s 12, there are good football teams who don’t make it. I was in the four era at No. 5 [as defensive coordinator at Texas A&M in 2020] with a really good football team that didn’t get in. Last year there were some really good teams that didn’t get in. That’s O.K. We don’t have to find a number that lets everybody get in, because you just saw it with basketball, right? All of a sudden now 68 isn’t enough because there’s still some teams getting left out so we’ve got to go to [76]. It’s O.K. to make it hard to get into the playoffs.”

There are several coaches—and perhaps even more athletic directors—here who disagree with Elko. They’d prefer the Big Ten Easy Button Playoff, with 24 teams. The argument goes that the percentage of FBS teams making the playoff at 12 is too small and out of line with other sports, both professional and college.

But college football doesn’t need to be like every other sport. It has the best regular season of them all, and the regular season would be adversely affected by an expanded playoff that dilutes the impact of many games while adding artificial importance to other, slightly-above-average teams that are trying to earn a participation trophy, as Elko alluded to.

“None of us are answering for the good of the sport,” Elko said. “We’re answering for the good of ourselves. The different conferences want what they want because it’s the best for them. We’ve got to figure out some type of unified leadership over college football. We’re a billion-dollar industry that’s getting governed in a lot of different separate pockets, not with one unified leadership. Until that happens, I don’t know how we solve this.

“Has there ever been an industry like this in the world? In the history of the world? Probably not.”

While Elko and everyone else is waiting for a theoretical CEO to appear and decree some level of uniform leadership, college sports will continue careening along a chaotic path. The federal government legislative Hail Mary continues to not work, despite years of trying. Player movement and compensation remain unconfined. New rules are treated with the same disdain as the old rules—maybe more, since they are largely unenforced.

College sports has a rich, colorful, occasionally tawdry history of cheating. But it’s never seen anything like the current climate.

Elko was asked whether his colleagues would actually abide by the rules, for the good of the sport.

“If there were rules that had consequences,” he said. “Like you look at the NFL as a model, why do coaches not try to get an edge in the NFL? Because the rules are enforced, right? The rules are enforced so nobody can gain a competitive edge by you circumventing the [salary] cap or doing different things in free agency.

“And so the problem with college sports is who’s enforcing the rules? And so if there are rules that nobody’s enforcing … then that just creates this waterfall of people trying to skirt things. And so I think that’s really more like, what are the rules? Are they being enforced? If so, cool. That’d be awesome. I think most of my colleagues would agree with that.”

Maybe, maybe not. Several other SEC coaches pointed out the friendly local judge strategy of flouting NCAA rules. Among SEC schools, Tennessee and Alabama athletes have gone that route, with varying success. Texas Tech quarterback Brendan Sorsby is headed to court in Lubbock next month in search of an injunction that could get him past NCAA gambling violations and on the field for the Red Raiders.

Next up, in all likelihood: LSU looking for a friendly local judge who will put basketball player RJ Luis Jr. in uniform for the 2026–27 season. Will Wade, longstanding exemplar of NCAA compliance virtue, landed Luis after he went undrafted in 2025 but signed multiple two-way contracts with NBA franchises last year.

This absurd flouting of the rules comes just months after Alabama’s similarly brazen move to play former big man Charles Bediako was terminated in court in Tuscaloosa. Louisiana might offer a more friendly home court advantage.

“Right now we’re living in a society of no fear when it comes to college athletics,” said Texas coach Steve Sarkisian. “When I break a rule, if I don’t like the fact that I got caught breaking that rule, to go get a judge to say, ‘Hey, get an injunction, we’ll deal with that a year from now.’ I don’t think that that’s what we want.

“We’ve got to get out of that way of thinking and just get to a point of, ‘Here’s the rules, let’s go try to navigate within the rules and be the best we can be. And if I step out of bounds, here’s your penalty.’ ”

Whether it’s lining up a fanboy judge or pushing for a bigger playoff, the motivation is the same: Whatever is good for my team, my athletic department and my school is all that matters. Whether it damages the entire college sports enterprise is of no concern. Changing that mentality is impossible in a loose confederation of fiefdoms with no central oversight.

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