MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. (AP) — While fans trickled into the Orange Bowl stadium for a quarterfinal where tickets were going for as little as $39, the commissioner of the Big 12 said “everything is on the table” when it comes to rebooting the College Football Playoff, including potentially moving more games onto campus.
The commissioners have until Jan. 23 to figure out what the playoff will look like next year. Expansion from the current 12-team format
and automatic bids have been the two biggest headlines in that discussion, though the idea of keeping more games on campus will factor in.
“We have to examine that, too,” Brett Yormark said Thursday, about a half-hour before kickoff of the quarterfinal between Texas Tech and Oregon. “Operationally, can we do it? The first-round games have been fantastic in every respect. I think it's a differentiator.”
Under the 12-team format, now in its second season, first-round games involving the fifth through 12th seeds have taken place on the campus of the better-seeded team. The rest of the rounds are at traditional bowl sites, with this year's final coming to Miami Gardens.
The Oregon-Texas Tech game kicked off in front of thousands of empty seats at Hard Rock Stadium. The Ducks traveled 3,200 miles to get to Miami and, if they keep winning, would head to Atlanta for the semifinals (Peach Bowl) before returning to South Florida for the final on Jan. 19. That's around 17,500 miles in travel over three weeks.
“There’s a better way to do all of this," Oregon coach Dan Lanning said the day before the game. "We’re not inventing the wheel here.”
There has been a wide gap between the Southeastern Conference and Big Ten visions of what the next iteration of the playoff should look like. The SEC sees a 16-team field filled with at-large bids; the Big Ten has pushed for a field of 16 or more with more automatic qualifiers.
Under terms of the agreement that goes into play next year, the other two Power Four conferences — Big 12 and Atlantic Coast Conference — are presumed to not have decision-making power in what comes next, though Yormark insisted “we have a big voice in that room.”
Yormark would not bite on the question when asked whether Group of Five conferences still belong in the tournament. Counting the first-round losses by Tulane and James Madison this year, those teams have lost by an average score of 41-19 over two seasons.
“Everything’s on the table and, and hopefully we’ll be very thoughtful about it, and if there’s change, we’ll announce it in due time,” Yormark said.
Yormark also said problems keeping schools from signing the participation agreement sent out by the new College Sports Commission are being resolved, and he expects the 68 Power Four teams to sign the contract soon.
A number of state attorneys general told their schools not to sign the agreement the commission sent out in November. Among the issues were that it stripped universities of their right to legal action regarding decisions the CSC makes.
Yormark says the agreement is being reworked in a way that all the schools can sign it so, as he said, “we're all signing up for the same rules of engagement.”
“But one person's opinion is, you don't need a piece of paper to enforce” the rules, he said.
In a separate interview with The Associated Press earlier this week, Texas Tech head of regents Cody Campbell also said he suspects the agreement will get signed, though he's not sure it will have any impact.
“I don't think it's going to be that helpful in terms of creating any kind of stability,” said Campbell, who would like to see Congress set up a completely new entity to run college sports. “And it's going to be challenged in court, already is being challenged in court, and it's not going to go well for the CSC.”
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