College Football Management Heavyweights have been meeting in New Orleans since Wednesday, so it should not be surprising where this is headed.
Revenue generation.
Or this quick total from university to player: do you want to pay for play? You’re getting more games.
Currently standing on 12 teams and not only expanding the college football playoffs, which could move to up to 16 teams, but the championship weekend expansion could evolve into play-in week of the playoffs.
Forget the CFP format. This is about financial survival.
One SEC athletic director spoke on condition of anonymity for process sensitivity and gave a rough overview of what the championship weekend would look like for USA Today Sports. The Big Ten is also considering a similar structure.
●The top two seeds will play in the conference championship game.
●The next six teams determined by the meeting tiebreaker are, as required, 3-8-4, No. 7, No. Play in the 5 vs No. 6 format.
●The winners of these four games will be moved to the playoffs. Losers can be used for large selection.
Clear wrinkles: losers of the championship game, the second team in the league is not guaranteed to spot in the college football playoffs.
However, the SEC university president wants to reduce his victory in conference championships, but he doesn’t want to minimize the high-demand video games that have a great interest in media rights negotiations in the future.
If the proposed format is set for 2024, Georgia and Texas will play in the SEC Championship Game, with the losers requiring a massive bid for CFP (as in the current setup).
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Remaining expansion games: Mississippi in Tennessee, Alabama A&M, and South Carolina in LSU, winners will advance to the 14- or 16-team college football playoffs.
In the model, Oregon and Pennsylvania would have played in the championship game, with the remaining CFP play-in games likely to be in Indiana, Michigan in Michigan and Iowa in Illinois.
More games are to increase revenue from media rights holders, and the safest move to offset losses of as much as $20 million a year on play fund salaries from media rights revenues at each school. Apparently. Schools can spend up to $20 million on players’ pay (for all sports, not just soccer), but they don’t have to commit to that number.
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The university president does not want to invite private equity to their sports programs. Also expanding soccer — perhaps the NCAA men’s basketball tournament, the college World Series baseball and softball tournaments are the path of minimal resistance.
Is the $20 million wage budget possible that could damage the athletics sector? The SEC recently announced revenue sharing for the 2023-24 grade, with each school receiving $52.5 million from media rights revenue and Bowl and NCAA Tournament bonuses.
The $20 million revenue sharing pool, scheduled to begin in the fall of 2025, represents almost 40% of each school’s media rights. That’s an incredible number for a university that hasn’t paid anything since.
At the remaining two power conferences, figures will be that ACC (an estimated $40 million payments per team) and 12 ($35 million) universities will spend more than 50% of each school’s media rights revenue.
The ACC, like the SEC and the Big Ten, shoot multiple formats over Championship weekends, and the Big 12 does the same if momentum goes like that. This is currently potentially 16 games between the four weekend power meetings.
The 2026 CFP format is likely to move to 14 teams, but the Big Ten leads the push of 16 teams. Furthermore, the SEC is not exactly the opposite. This is because the expansion is likely to include four automatic qualifying spots, Big Ten and Sec.
Unlike the first CFP contract (ends in the 2025 season), the SEC and Big Ten do not require a unanimous vote from Bowl Borough Meeting or Notre Dame to change formats. Starting with the 2026 contract, there are in the industry that Big Ten and the SEC don’t need a majority.
They simply need to agree with each other to begin the change.
All media rights deal with four power conferences, seen within the contract structure, allowing for a rise in revenue with the increase in high market value games. Industry sources told USA Today Sports in September that the SEC and the Big Ten were also in the early stages of expanding regular season scheduling between the two super conferences to increase revenue.
So they’ll meet this week to discuss the format of the new CFP contracts that will start in 2026, but it’s hardly doubtful that this is more than the number of teams, automatic qualifiers, seeds and games on campus sites. there is no.
This is to find ways to keep the athletic sector floating amid dramatic economic changes in the near distance.
This is about financial survival.
Matt Hayes is a senior national college football writer for the USA Today Sports Network. x Follow him at @matthayescfb.