Last week in New Orleans, the SEC and the Big 10 leaders met to discuss a new college football playoff selection system. They also had, on the table, concepts that have college football leaving the NCAA behind, or even bigger…the Power Four conferences leaving as one. As we had our first one-on-one with new Wake Forest coach Jake Dickert last week, we talked over some of the big-picture issues that dominate college sports headlines
Ironically two of the Power Four were not invited to the meetings. The ACC and Big 12 had their invites lost in the mail. The reality is that it is a Power Two makeup of conferences. The SEC and Big 10 have TV contracts that dole out double the amount for their schools than those for the ACC and Big 12.
Wake Forest Coach Jake Dickert Tackles the Big Picture Questions
Last Spring the 10 FBS conferences and Notre Dame signed a memorandum of understanding that essentially gives all of the playoff decision-making power to the SEC and Big 10 when the current contract ends at the conclusion of the 2025 season.
The next expansion to take place, before the 2026 season, will be from 12 teams in the playoffs to 14 or 16 teams. The thought process with the most momentum from those who have a voice would create automatic qualifiers per conference. The SEC screamed all during the postseason that it got too few teams in the playoffs. Commissioner Greg Sankey will push through a plan to make sure his numbers are guaranteed in the future, regardless of the on-field performances of his schools.
The new format favored by the Power Two would guarantee four playoff spots each for the Big 10 and the SEC. Everyone else from the Big 12 and ACC to the Group of Five schools would get one or two.
Dickert comes from a unique perspective. He went from interim head coach at Washington State to the “permanent” head coach in the span of one season. But then he was also in Pullman for the dissolving of the Pac 12 as a power conference as schools went elsewhere to get their TV money, leaving Oregon State and Washington State with tenuous futures.
In December he made the move to Wake Forest and the ACC, which has branding and imaging issues of its own. Schools in the conference get just over half of the TV revenue of what even the bottom feeders in the Big 10 and SEC get. Still, it was an upgrade from the uncertainty in the Pacific Northwest.
Automatic Qualifiers
We talked to Dickert about conferences getting a pre-determined number of playoff spots, regardless of on-field performance. He is not a fan.
“I’m in favor of the best 16 teams playing,” Dickert told us, saying it should not matter what conference those schools come from. “You go out there and you prove it on the field.” He added, “I’m a big fan of 16 teams. Let’s go there. Let’s expand it a little bit. And let’s show who the best teams are, but on the field.”
Part of the complexity of the negotiations is the imbalance in conference schedules. The Big 10 and Big 12 play nine conference games and three out-of-conference games. The ACC and SEC do eight and four. “Each conference has to navigate that piece of it,” Dickert added, acknowledging that each conference is going to do what it deems best for its member schools. “But let’s go settle it on the field, the best we can. Maybe we can guarantee some sort of non-conference overlaps [in the schedule], so we can determine who those teams are. But you’ve got to go out and earn it on the field. That’s life. So to guarantee anything is like, what are we doing?”
The ACC had its meetings in Charlotte two weeks ago. News from the three days was intentionally scarce. But we do know the conference leaders are discussing a change to the championship format the first weekend in December.
ACC Proposals
The proposal would have the first-place school in the ACC get a bye on conference championship weekend and take an automatic qualifying spot for the College Football Playoffs. Then the second and third-place teams would play in the ACC championship game. The goal would be that that game would make a compelling enough statement that both teams would get into the playoffs. That would give the ACC three teams instead of the guaranteed two. The ACC presidents, chancellors, and athletic directors are still a way off from any final conclusion.
While Dickert said he did not want to comment on what is still conjecture at this point, he added that it puts a different perspective on conference championship games as a whole, and whether we even need them anymore, despite their huge revenue pull. “How the conference championship landscape evolves from here in the next few years is going to be interesting,” he said. “Do they do away with all of them? Do they not?” Dickert said because of the growing size of the conferences, coming down to one game becomes a bigger challenge. “If you have 18 teams [in a conference] or 16 teams, how do you get down to one when your schedule still matters? There is a give and take that because we have to fit so much into a certain calendar.”
That calendar is also a hot topic throughout the college football world. December in particular, with the conference championship games, the bowl season and beginning of the playoffs, the early signing period for high school recruits, and the opening of the transfer portal window. Most coaches will tell you it is unsustainable long-term.
Football Living in Its Own World
Thus the subject matter is now about two years in the making of college football pulling away from the NCAA and running itself with a dedicated sports commissioner. The working theory is that the challenges of college football are systemically different than all the other sports.
Dickert takes the plan to a whole different level. He advocates three different divisions, each with its own leadership. “I’ve actually championed this for a little while, having three different divisions. There would be a football division, a men’s and women’s basketball division, and an Olympic sport division.”
He said the Fall sports, football clearly included, being tied to the academic calendar of its school is more problematic than it is for the other sports. “Our sport’s season is actually January 1, not August 1 to August 1. Not all sports can run on the same timeline. To fit them in that way is an old structure process.”
Managing the Calendar
An example would be the transfer portal window. It’s a December to January format right now, with extensions for players still competing in the postseason even after the portal window closes. But then the issue is how they get into their new school in late January when classes started two to three weeks earlier. It causes players to leave even before their postseason is done.
He suggested that even the upcoming revenue sharing that results from the House v. NCAA legal settlement would be better looked at on individual sports needs. He said a commissioner overseeing each of the three divisions could work with the schools to create systems that work in the smaller sense instead of one system that tries to encapsulate all sports at all universities.
The College Football Playoff Committee is meeting again this coming week in Dallas to further iron out the future reconstruction of the current system.
Main Image: Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports
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