Elimination of conference championship games ‘huge obstacle’ for 28-team CFP, per CFB insider
By Rolando Rosa
Published:
In the midst of the Big Ten’s recent suggestion for a 28-team College Football Playoff, ESPN’s Heather Dinich is reporting there’s a major roadblock in the way of the format getting approval.
During an Aug. 18 appearance on ESPN’s Get Up, Dinich revealed that the Power 4 commissioners are going to meet in person in the coming weeks to discuss the matter because 1 of the aspects includes the elimination of conference championship games.
“Everyone I spoke to in and out of the Big Ten stress that this is an idea that is in its infancy,” Dinich said. “As a matter of fact, 1 person in the Big Ten said that that their head coaches had not even been formally presented the idea yet.”
Under the proposal, the Big Ten and SEC would each earn 7 automatic bids, with the ACC and Big 12 getting 5 spots apiece. The Group of Five would have 2 guaranteed bids.
“It’s important to know that they’ve got to have buy-in from all of the commissioners because they are talking about eliminating conference championship games, which even those in the Big Ten will acknowledge is a huge obstacle, not impossible but it is 1 of the biggest obstacles in terms of making this happen,” Dinich said. “I talked to multiple CFP sources and a lot of people, everyone pretty much, was surprised by this and not everyone enjoyed being surprised by this.”
Clearly common ground will have to be found because at the moment there’s a lack of unison for the bold CFP idea.
“I talked to 1 person who said: ‘We look like petulant children throwing spaghetti at the wall’ and didn’t seem to believe this was a viable option,” Dinich said. “So there’s a lot of discussions that have to take place but from the Big Ten’s perspective they think this could be a fun mini-March Madness type of event with play-in games that would enhance the regular season.”
The current CFP format features 12 teams, with automatic bids for the 5 highest-ranking conference champions.
