ACC commissioner Jim Phillips told ESPN “there’s a lot of push” to expand the College Football Playoff in 2024 — two years before the tournament undergoes its first phase of expansion.
“It’s just the logistics of this thing are difficult,” Phillips told ESPN Wednesday at ACC basketball media day. “Not insurmountable, but time is not a friend of ours right now.”
In September, the College Football Playoff Board of Managers — a group of FBS university presidents — voted to expand the CFP from four to 12 teams.
- The expansion is set for 2026 after ESPN’s current deal for CFP media rights expires.
- ESPN’s current pact reportedly pays out an average of $470 million per year.
- An expanded playoff could see a rights deal fetch as much as $2.2 billion annually.
The NCAA men’s Division I basketball tournament may also be expanded to provide more qualified teams with access to college sports’ “crown jewel” of championships. A potential plan for expanding March Madness includes increasing the number of teams from 64 to 96.
Speaking of Expansion
Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark expressed interest in expanding the conference westward last month. The conference will be losing Texas and Oklahoma to the SEC in 2025 and is preparing to add four new members: Cincinnati, UCF, Houston, and BYU.
UNC athletic director Bubba Cunningham and university president Kevin Guskiewicz also discussed the idea of a merger between the ACC and the Pac-12 or Big 12, referring to it in a text message as the Atlantic-Pacific Athletic Conference or APAC.
The Big Ten will add USC and UCLA in 2024.
