Pac-12 Calls For Anything But Current College Football Playoff

Conference sends out a plea for change shortly before Alabama-Georgia kickoff.

A few hours before the SEC national championship game kicked off, a matchup also known in some circles as the College Football Playoff, the Pac-12 felt the need to state its position on future such endeavors.

In essence, it said in a simple release that anything but the current four-game format will do.

The Pac-12 basically did this since the conference can't play its way into the elite foursome and needs automatic entry just to say it's been there.

It knows about these things that equate to a closed club. It used to own this type of domination in basketball.

When known as the Pac-8 and other earlier iterations, UCLA used to win national title after title in the final hoop competition — the Bruins collected 10 in 12 years through 1975 — to the point this indoor sporting exercise got overly boring to everyone except those in Westwood and the NCAA finally did something about it.

College's governing body finally doubled the NCAA basketball tournament from 16 teams in '75, and doubled it again to 64 in 1985, and that did the trick as far as parity and getting everyone involved.

The Pac-12 now has won all the basketball marbles just twice in the past 36 seasons — the Bruins claimed their final title in 1995 and Arizona captured its only championship in 1997. 

With a committee assigned to tackle this matter apparently dragging its feet in considering six proposals and instituting corresponding change, the Pac-12 decided to remind everyone that time is fleeting.

The message here: Anything other than what's in place is good with the conference, and do it now inside the final two years of the current CFP agreement. 

The choices are as follows:

1. Qualification for the best 12 teams;

2. Automatic qualifications (AQs) for the six highest-rated conference champions and six at-large bids (“6+6”) (the original proposal made by the CFP sub-committee in June of 2021);

3. AQs for the Autonomy Five conferences and one AQ for the highest-ranked Group of Five champion, along with six at-large bids (“5+1+6”);

4. Qualification for the best eight teams;

5. AQs for the six highest-rated conference champions and two at-large bids (“6+2”); 

6. AQs for the Autonomy Five conferences and one AQ for the highest-ranked Group of Five champion, along with two at-large bids (“5+1+2”).

The committee has 11 board members and unanimous vote is needed to introduce something new. 

The Pac-12, headed up now by commissioner George Kliavkoff, pointed out that board opposition to every football playoff proposal exists — except by its own conference, which would gladly take any of the six on the table. 

If no one can agree on any format, tack on another two years of delay before something else can be introduced, and this effectively will keep it a four-team, SEC-dominated playoff that only the SEC will truly enjoy.

After an 0-5 bowl showing this past month, the Pac-12 is willing to try anything to spur some national success. Any kind of success. To get invited to something meaningful in the college football ranks.

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