The College Football Playoff management committee convened Thursday to begin hammering out whether a 12-team playoff could debut as soon as the 2024 season.
The committee consists of the 10 commissioners of FBS conferences and Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick. Reporters in Irving, Texas, said they met for about 4 1/2 hours in a meeting room at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport.
A deadline is not set, according to CFP executive director Bill Hancock, but the meeting produced some optimism.
“I even feel better coming out of the meeting than I did going into it, and I was positive going into the meeting,” Big Ten commissioner Kevin Warren told reporters. “But we have a lot of experienced people and have common goals and it was a very productive meeting.
“So I’m very pleased where we are, and we have a lot of work to do, though. We have a lot to get done.”
Other options on the table include beginning the 12-team format in 2025 or 2026, ACC commissioner Jim Phillips said.
The CFP board of managers announced last Friday that the sport would move to a 12-team playoff. The playoff originally was set up as a 12-year contract set to expire after the 2025 season.
“We have asked our commissioners, the management committee, to explore the possibility of us beginning the 12-team playoff format before the 2026 season, in either 2024 or 2025,” Mississippi State president Mark Keenum, chair of the board of managers, said at the time.
Details that could stand in the way of an earlier transition include the logistics of existing TV contracts, venues and hotels. Last month, the Atlanta and Miami areas were selected to host the 2025 and 2026 title games, scheduled for the first Monday of January each year.
The CFP has been a four-team tournament since its inception following the 2014 season. The 12 teams in the revamped playoff will be the six highest-ranked conference champions and the six highest-ranked at-large teams.
–Field Level Media