A Jersey Guy: Leverage games begin in CFP playoff expansion talks
I'm going to date myself here, but (for the uninitiated) that's why we have Google.
We take you back 40 year to the early days of Saturday Night Live when the late, great Gilda Radner introduced us to Roseanne Roseannadanna, who would talk about a "Mr. Richard Fader of Fort Lee, N.J (an actual person) writing about a topic, which prompted Roseann to say" "It's always something.''
Which brings us to this week and the on-going debate about expansion of the current four-team College Football Playoff system from 4 to perhaps 12 teams.
Enter (why I am not surprised, which I will explain later), 77-year old West Virginia President Gordon Gee.
Gee told the WVU student paper that he was against an expansion of the playoff system.
"I think expansion is on life support,'' Gee said. ""I'm not voting for it. I think the Big Ten will not vote for it and the Pac-12 will not vote for it either.''
Gee says he is part of the CFP Board members discussing expansion at their next meeting in September. According to ESPN, any decision must be a unanimous vote to proceed to the next level, which means a No vote by Gee would stop (at least until the contract with ESPN expires in 2025.
Gee is, to put it mildly, a character
Before his current stint at West Virginia, he was President of Ohio State (twice), Brown, Colorado and Vanderbilt
He twice created headlines at Ohio State when he was quoted as saying he wanted to be President of a school it's football team could be proud of, which was amusing.
He dove into more dangerous waters when during one of Notre Dame's flirtations with the Big Ten, Gee said:
"I (when he was at Ohio State) negotiated with them during my first term and the Fathers are holy on Sunday and Holy Hell the rest of the week.
You just can't trust those damn Catholics on a Thursday or a Friday.''
Gee and Ohio State issued apologies.
All of that aside, Gee still knows what he is doing in many cases and his comments this week were not idle.
Gee is president of West Virginia, which is a member of the Big 12, whose survival (without Texas and Oklahoma) is in question.
West Virginia wants to be part of the ACC, which is generally in favor of expansion.
Gee's message to the ACC: You want my vote on expansion, include us in your expansion plans.
The opposition from the Big 10 and Pac-12 on expanding the playoffs is baffling in one sense.
Let's start with this.
The SEC is fine with a four-team system, since in any given year, the SEC will be a strong contender for two of the four slots.
The Pac-12 and Big 12 have been shut out of the process and the Big Ten has been hard-pressed for a second playoff contender besides Ohio State.
In a 12-team playoff, even if the SEC had four teams chosen, there would still be 8 slots open.
Expanding the playoffs HELPS the Big Ten and Pac-12.
None of this will occur immediately, but, lots of people as evidenced by Gordon Gee's comments, are getting themselves in position.
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Word out of Big 12 is that first move after Texas and OU is settled will be to regroup with two additional schools at the start.
Most likely candidates look like BYU and UCF, but it is a fluid situation.