If you ask a coach who knows they can sell making a postseason tournament to get more money and have job security if they would want to make a tournament bigger, we all know what the answer will be.
It’s with that backdrop that we shouldn’t be surprised that news came out earlier this week that the American Football Coaches Association was going to be backing a format change to the College Football Playoff that would bump it up to 24 teams. It would double the number of teams that qualify for football’s
postseason championship, and after years where it’s been proven that the cream rises to top, coaches would rather sell the fact that they can make the tournament to their donors.
This is following the wonderful news that the NCAA Tournament will be adding eight more teams making the field of 68 a field of 76. It also expands the first couple of days of the tournament, and makes it to where Dayton won’t be the only place where the tournament starts. It’s such great news that teams like Auburn and Indiana this past year would make it into the tournament field.
Ultimately the two tournament expansions are signs of a bigger problem with college sports—that more money has to be obtained by whatever means is necessary. A 24-team CFP means you’ll have several more on-campus playoff games, which will bring money to more programs as they get the home sales for at least one if not more games. These are also more games to sell to ESPN, which will turn around and sell those games or sell ad inventory for those games to where it will create even more money.
The NCAA Tournament addition is all about getting more of the Power Conference teams in. With the higher number of teams and the additional games, more teams will be able to get tournament “points” which is more money that can divided up amongst the conferences, however they decide to do so. Somehow—and maybe it’s because of the contract they signed—the NCAA promises that they are going to be able to get more money for this extra inventory.
There are people out there that will support the expansion of both, and as a UNC fan it’s hard not to at least be optimistic about a greater opportunity to reach each sport’s postseason. What would have happened in 2023 had there been an expanded field and that group would have had one more shot to make a run? It’s very likely a 24-team CFP field brings Drake Maye into the CFP back in 2022 even with their late-season stumbles. It’s also possible that the carrot of having the CFP might have been enough to change the attitude of how the last two games of 2023 went.
That also likely means you still have a bigger reason to keep Hubert Davis and Mack Brown.
The problem with expansion, of course, is that we’ve seen with each level of expansion that each tournament has the right amount of teams already. Each winner of the CFP didn’t come from the last few to make the cut, and in this era of the transfer portal and NIL it’s difficult to see how the 76th team would be able to win seven games in order to make it to the National Title Game.
Overall it just speaks to how traditions—one of the biggest selling points of college sports—continue to fall by the wayside to feed the money monster that has just exploded in the last few seasons. Even if players weren’t being paid, let’s be honest, this was going to happen. Don’t forget how during COVID—before NIL—the SEC went ahead and snapped up Texas and Oklahoma, only to see the Big Ten take on UCLA and USC. Basically the original PAC-12 died because of money and before NIL and the transfer portal really existed. The drive for more money by each program has been an ugly reality for decades, if anything it’s just more honest than it had been.
So what do you think about the expansion of both championships? Is expansion good for UNC and the college sports, or should there be some way for contraction to produce a better product? Is it good that one expanded but the other didn’t? Use the comments below to let us know.
