ACC, Big Ten, Pac-12 commissioners share thoughts on potential Playoff expansion
By Jake Rill
Published:
Now that The Alliance has become official, the ACC, Big Ten and Pac-12 will be coming together to discuss various issues and align its views toward the landscape of college football.
One of the most talked about topics in the sport has been the potential expansion of the College Football Playoff. Since the format was implemented ahead of the 2014 season, only 4 teams have had an opportunity to play for the national championship each year.
During the virtual press conference held to announce The Alliance on Tuesday, the commissioners of each of the 3 conferences shared their respective viewpoints on CFP expansion.
ACC commissioner Jim Phillips made it known that his conference isn’t fully sure how it feels about potentially adding more teams to the Playoff, but it’s been thinking it over.
“The last couple years where we had a group of individuals take a look at a proposed new alternative, they did excellent. They did excellent work of providing an analysis and an option for us to consider,” Phillips said. “As we all got together in Dallas in June, the idea was we were going to spend the rest of the summer, until the third week of September when we reconvened, socializing the Playoff.
“What did we like about it? What did we have issues with? Did it make sense? Too many games? What did it do to the bowl system and the bowl structure itself? Certainly from an ACC standpoint, we haven’t made a decision about where we will fall. We want to take the whole entire period in order to really vet it thoroughly.”
Pac-12 commissioner George Kliavkoff made his side clear — his conference wants more CFP teams.
“I’ll just briefly add that the Pac-12 is 100% in favor of the expansion of the College Football Playoff,” Kliavkoff said. “There are issues at the margins, but I’ll echo what [Big Ten commissioner] Kevin [Warren] and Jim said in that the work that was done by the committee to come up with the 12-team Playoff is exemplary. There’s a lot of really good stuff in there.”
And as for Warren, his comments put the Big Ten somewhere in the middle.
“I’m a big believer in expanding the College Football Playoff, but I’m also a big believer in being methodical and doing our homework,” Warren said.
For now, the CFP remains at 4 teams. But it’s possible that could change in the near future.
Jake Rill contributes to news coverage for Saturday Down South. He has covered the SEC since 2016.
