For the uninformed, today yielded a fairly significant development where the college football overlords agreed unanimously on the playoff berths going forward to be:
* FIVE automatic bids for the five highest-ranked conference champs, which in most years is presumed to be Big Ten, SEC, ACC, Big 12, and then whichever group of five champ (but multiple G5 champs could be ranked higher that P4 champs, in theory)
* SEVEN remaining at-large bids would go based on ranking, with no limit on an individual conference's participation.
In terms of details, this means the Pac-12 is officially no longer a factor in play (Oregon St and Wazzu got some financial concessions in their favor). Notre Dame will make it basically any time they're in the Top 10.
Heading into today it was rumored that ESPN was upset about how little consensus there was amongst the CFB power brokers on things and was considering walking away from the deal which gave them broadcasting rights through 2032.
My conspiracy theory: if you believe the rumors are true that ESPN, Fox, and Turner are getting into bed together to form an all-sports mega streaming service, ESPN was looking for a way to restart negotiations from scratch knowing that their only remaining competitors in terms of bidding would have been CBS and NBC, and they probably could have leveraged some extra Fox/Turner money to further reduce their own out of pocket costs.
My other conspiracy theory: if the ESPN/Fox/Turner mega streamer comes to fruition, TV right deals are going to come back down to earth and all this megaconference madness will have been for nothing.
* FIVE automatic bids for the five highest-ranked conference champs, which in most years is presumed to be Big Ten, SEC, ACC, Big 12, and then whichever group of five champ (but multiple G5 champs could be ranked higher that P4 champs, in theory)
* SEVEN remaining at-large bids would go based on ranking, with no limit on an individual conference's participation.
In terms of details, this means the Pac-12 is officially no longer a factor in play (Oregon St and Wazzu got some financial concessions in their favor). Notre Dame will make it basically any time they're in the Top 10.
Heading into today it was rumored that ESPN was upset about how little consensus there was amongst the CFB power brokers on things and was considering walking away from the deal which gave them broadcasting rights through 2032.
My conspiracy theory: if you believe the rumors are true that ESPN, Fox, and Turner are getting into bed together to form an all-sports mega streaming service, ESPN was looking for a way to restart negotiations from scratch knowing that their only remaining competitors in terms of bidding would have been CBS and NBC, and they probably could have leveraged some extra Fox/Turner money to further reduce their own out of pocket costs.
My other conspiracy theory: if the ESPN/Fox/Turner mega streamer comes to fruition, TV right deals are going to come back down to earth and all this megaconference madness will have been for nothing.
