A Jersey Guy: CFB: What's Next?
The celebration continues at Georgia, while the remainder of the college football world ponders on ways to get the national championship out of the firm grasp of the Southeastern Conference.
In case you were wondering, the SEC has won the last three national championship games, and 12 of the last 16 titles.
The topic dejour--which is again in the pause mode--is how to expand the CFP playoff from 4 to 12 teams.
While there seems to be a consensus that is the best option to follow, there is no real sense of urgency to get it done before the current 12 year contract expires in 2026.
Atlantic Coast Conference commissioner Jim Phillips, barely a year into his job, fired the latest pubic utterance last week in Indianapolis when he said, ""We don't have a College Football Playoff problem, we have a college football--college athletics/NCAA problem.''
Smart man.
Lost in the chatter about expanding the playoff system has been an inability to even get individual conferences to agree on a date when their latest expansion configuration will begin.
The issues involving college football in the CFP-BCS era has never been a dearth of ideas, it has been a lack or absence of one voice, speaking for a sport, which has failed to get all parties agreeing on a single course of action.
Lost in the chatter about expanding the playoff system has been an inability to even get individual conferences to agree on a date when their latest expansion configuration will begin.
Right now five of the 10 college football conferences are in a transition mode, awaiting departures and arrivals.
Included in that group are the Big 12 and SEC, with the SEC being the catalyst for all of this movement by announcing last summer that it was inviting Oklahoma and Texas to join as members
That started a tsunami of changes which trickled down to Conference USA and the Sun Belt and American Athletic as conferences made moves, all without specific target dates or financial numbers related to leaving before contracts expired.
The departure/arrival for Texas and Oklahoma is the reason for the log jam among the other conferences.
The only debate is a financial one, involving how much money in exit fees must be paid and how quickly.
In the case of the SEC and Oklahoma and Texas, money is NOT a deal-breaking issue. According to several sources, Texas was ready to sign the deal in September so it could move to the SEC next season.
Oklahoma has been the reluctant partner, which also seems ridiculous if you how much more money the Sooners can make in the SEC than in the Big 12.
There is no reason why this cant or shouldn't be settled in the next few weeks with an announcement coming that in Sept of 2023, OU and Texas will be full playing members in the SEC.
Once that happens, UCF, , Houston and BYU can join the Big 12 and the other conference moves can also be finalized.
All of that, however, is predicated on college football finding one voice to speak for a sport which has been drowned out by a cacophony of voices, each with their own agenda
Once that is done, the issue of working on expanding to a 12-team playoff could move forward, perhaps as early as the 2024 season.
All of that, however, is predicated on college football finding one voice to speak for a sport which has been drowned out by a cacophony of voices, each with their own agenda.