“Everybody is more concerned about their own silo than everybody else’s,” he added. “Let me just say there’s more parochiality than there needs to be,” said Bowlsby, the longest-tenured commissioner of a Power 5 conference.
He signaled that at least some opposition to the 12-team proposal he helped craft - a plan to offer bids to the six highest-ranked conference champions, plus six at-large teams - appeared intractable so far. Most commissioners and college leaders left through alternative exits or brushed past reporters, directing them to speak with Bill Hancock, the playoff’s executive director, and Mississippi State President Mark Keenum, the chairman of the playoff’s board of managers - the panel of university presidents and chancellors who oversee the management committee.īowlsby, though, could not contain his exasperation.Īlthough he did not slam the door on an outcome that would increase the size of the playoff before the current agreement’s expiration at the end of the 2025 season, Bowlsby suggested that the chances for a speedy accord were vanishing.
“Have you ever seen the movie ‘Groundhog Day’?” Big 12 Commissioner Bob Bowlsby said after the latest set of meetings concluded on Monday. 3 Georgia, ended hours before the game without the unanimity required to make significant changes to the playoff. Three days of meetings in Indianapolis, where the playoff’s 11-person management committee convened ahead of Monday night’s national championship game between top-ranked Alabama and No. But the addition of games as soon as the 2024 season is increasingly unlikely after months of turmoil, with the negotiations complicated at different moments by disputes over potential compositions of the playoff field, fears of protracted seasons and mistrust that flowed from a surprise round of conference membership shuffles.
The playoff, which features four teams each season, could still grow in the coming years and annually inject hundreds of millions of dollars more into the richest conferences in college sports. INDIANAPOLIS - The College Football Playoff’s ambitions for expansion stalled on Monday, when the sport’s leading power brokers proved unable to agree on a plan almost seven months after some of them publicly proposed a 12-team format.