Will the College Football Playoff turn into March Madness?
The latest postseason expansion proposal from the Big Ten—which would see the CFP grow to 24 or 28 teams—furthers recent efforts from college football leaders to make the Playoff even more of a made-for-TV showcase than it already is.
Earlier this summer, as most of the expansion discussion centered on a 16-team Playoff, Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti made his case for a model that would allow his conference to create a “play-in weekend” of games, with four automatic CFP bids. “That’s a great weekend for college football,” Petitti said on The Joel Klatt Show. “The best way to market the sport is to play more good games.”
That idea was supported by SMU football coach Rhett Lashlee, who proposed something similar for not just the ACC but all Power 4 conferences. “Imagine if Championship Saturday every year right after Thanksgiving was your four Power 4 conference championship games, and you have a 3 versus 6 and a 4 versus 5 in every conference playing to try to get in a 16-team Playoff,” Lashlee said at ACC media days. “It would be like March Madness Thursday and Friday. It would be the best Saturday that college football could ever manufacture.”
Numbers Game
More CFP games would put college football fans’ appetites for postseason action to the test.
During the first year of the 12-team CFP, the four first-round games averaged 10.6 million viewers on ESPN and TNT Sports platforms, and the four quarterfinal matchups averaged 16.9 million viewers on ESPN platforms.
The Big Ten’s newest expansion proposal would potentially eliminate conference championship games. Last season, just two title games topped 10 million viewers: the SEC’s (Georgia-Texas, 16.6 million on ABC) and the Big Ten’s (Oregon–Penn State, 10.5 million on CBS).
FCS Paving the Way?
Division I FCS teams already annually compete in a 24-team Playoff that sees the top eight teams in the bracket receive first-round byes. Higher-seeded teams typically host the Playoff games on their campus until the neutral-site championship game.
The debut of CFP home games was a major success last season, and the idea of playing more games on college campuses—regardless of expansion—has gained traction.
However, while there has been mostly positive reaction to expanding the CFP to 16 teams, growing beyond that number could receive pushback, like what the NCAA is facing around its efforts to expand March Madness from 68 to 72 or 76 teams.
