With the College Football Championship happening today, it's the wrap-up of the college season. That means we'll have to wait until late August/early September for more upsets, playoff speculation, and colossal matchups. However, there's one issue that many people want to see addressed: playoff expansion.
If you don't know, not every Power Pive conference champion gets in automatically. If that were the case, the Pac-12 would've gotten in more than twice. You'd also have a Group of Five team in every year crashing the party. Having at least six teams in the playoff sounds reasonable and a big financial win for everyone. So what's the holdup?
For one, some people are worried about how the bowls will be distributed. For example, the Rose Bowl has a solid tradition of starting on New Year's Day at 5 PM EST. How will the committee accommodate such a request?
There's also revenue distribution involved. There are probably going to be two networks involved for the next deal after 2026. Another thing to consider with this is how much each school's getting. A dream scenario is each school gets an even cut of the revenue. However, it's more likely that the Power Five schools will get the bulkier shares.
Of course, there's also the number of teams that's a sticking point. Some people are content with having eight teams: six conference winners (five Power Five teams and one Group of Five team) with two at-large bids. However, the number varies from six to 12 teams for some people.
Whatever way you slice it, we're nowhere close to having an expanded playoff any time soon. If anything, it'll probably happen when the current television contract expires in 2026. If both sides want an expanded postseason, they must set aside their differences and come up with a plausible compromise.
