Major college football program reveals talks with SEC amid expansion speculation

After being left out of the College Football Playoff, the brass at Notre Dame are talking to their counterparts in the SEC about possible expansion in the future.

Is more expansion coming to college football? After Notre Dame was snubbed from the playoff, it could become a possibility. | USA Today Sports | Imagn

Notre Dame has seen its College Football Playoff hopes dismantled, has declined its bowl game, and watched its relationship with the ACC deteriorate, all in the last few days.

And now, the man in charge of Notre Dame athletics has revealed he had a conversation with the commissioner of the SEC.

“The only commissioner I’ve spoken to, and I’ve had a couple of great conversations with him, is Greg Sankey,” Bevacqua said of the SEC commissioner.

He added: “Greg and I talk all the time. I can’t tell you how much I admire Greg and his leadership.”

What Notre Dame is interested in

Before you start thinking that Notre Dame is about to join a conference, think again.

Bevacqua said his conversation with Sankey had nothing to do with the Irish finally forsaking its independence, but about the structure and format of the College Football Playoff in the years to come.

Being left out of the playoff tends to inspire teams to re-think what the playoff should look like.

“Gave him my viewpoint on the process. He shared some thoughts that he had with me that, obviously, are between Greg and me,” Bevacqua said.

“Format? Greg knows. They all know how I feel about the format. Put the process aside. The format, being, you know, four teams, twelve teams, fourteen teams, sixteen teams, a thousand teams?”

What should the playoff look like

Okay, maybe not a thousand. How about sixteen? That seems to be the new sweet spot from Notre Dame’s perspective. And it could be for others, too. 

“It should be sixteen teams, in my opinion, with five automatic qualifiers and eleven at-larges,” he said. 

“Think about this year. If we had four teams, it would have been perfect. I don’t think anybody would argue that those aren’t the right four teams that are one through four, right, the way they’re playing. Texas Tech, Ohio State, Indiana, and Georgia... Sixteen would have been perfect. Notre Dame, Texas, Vanderbilt, you know, who else is in there.”

Expansion would cover all the problems

Bevacqua said that the particular metrics the playoff selectors use will necessarily change as each season brings its own unique situations.

The answer to compensating for those year-by-year situations is to simply expand the format and allow for more teams to have a chance.

“You know, year by year, you’re never going to have the same data points each year. It’s never going to work out perfectly, whether you have four teams, twelve, fourteen, or sixteen,” he said. 

“What I like about sixteen is it does create more opportunity, it does create more narratives around more schools and yet preserves the integrity and importance of the regular season, and I think that’s one of the greatest things college football has going for it.”

What about the regular season?

Notre Dame’s head man doesn’t think expanding the playoff will have a negative impact on the regular season.

“The regular season is more important in college football than it is in any other sport by a mile…College football? I mean, hey we see it,” he said. 

“We saw it last year. We saw it this year. We knew last year, when we lost to NIU? We had no wiggle room. Every game was a bowl game. Every game was a CFP game. This year, after we lost in the last second to A&M? Zero room for error. 

“Turns out, we didn’t even have zero room for error. But, I think sixteen teams, with that five and eleven breakdown, is the way to go. And I think a vast, vast majority of people in the CFP management room feel the same way.”