Since the College Football Playoff working group announced its recommendation for a new 12-team field, the CFB community has been focused on the expanded postseason. The timeline for expansion, however, was not spelled out in the initial recommendation.

On Friday, after the conclusion of a meeting of commissioners in Chicago, CFP director Bill Hancock released a statement saying the expansion process will move forward. Hancock also held a Q&A with members of the media. Before taking a question, Hancock made clear in his opening statement that the expansion is still months away from becoming official.

“The management committee met over the last 24 hours with some sleep time in there, plenty of sleep time,” Hancock said in his opening statement. “They thoroughly examined the recommendations from the working group, and the process will move forward. We said this is just the beginning, and it is very much just the beginning of a process that will not conclude before September.”

It appears that auto-bids is one issue to be ironed out between now and September. Under the proposed expansion, the field of 12 teams would include the six highest-ranked conference champions, plus the six highest-ranked other teams as determined by the CFP selection committee. On Friday, outgoing Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott issued a statement calling for the Autonomy 5 (Power 5) conference champions to receive automatic Playoff bids.

Once expansion becomes official, presumably in September, the next big question is when the CFP will switch to a 12-team field. As you can see from the transcript below, Hancock indicated it will be 2023 at the earliest.

There’s not been any discussion yet about when this could – I know we’re still working on the “if” it will be implemented, but the “when” it could be implemented. You put this out there and a lot of people are thinking, okay, are we going to have to wait until 2026? Can we get this until 2023? Is that even part of the discussion at this point as how soon this could be implemented?

BILL HANCOCK: The implementation part obviously is a very important part of this. And the working group intentionally did not get into it. They want to put a proposal in front of the management committee that the committee could consider without having the shackles of trying to figure out when to implement it.

And the group this week didn’t get into implementation time in a significant way. That will come later. The first step is determining whether this new format is even feasible or something that the people on campus want to do. So that implementation – that important implementation matter is still to be discussed.

The 2022 season, you’ve been saying this obviously couldn’t be implemented for this year, is 2022 off the table also?

BILL HANCOCK: Yes, it is. Both this year and next year is off the table.

So, the earliest is 2023?

BILL HANCOCK: Yes. Not to say that it will happen then, but that’s the earliest that it could. And I don’t want the headline to be “Hancock says it could happen in 2023,” but that’s just the earliest. It cannot happen this year or next year.

Hancock added that contracts in place are a big reason why the CFP can’t move to 12 teams for the 2021 or 2022 seasons.

“Contracts are in place. That’s the main reason,” Hancock told reporters. “And if you think about it, by the time this gets approved, if it does even get approved in September or if it’s kicked down the road after that, we’d be pretty close to that season starting.”