AMELIA ISLAND \u2014 The Atlantic Coast Conference is backing the Big Ten\u2019s push for a 24-team playoff, commissioner Jim Phillips said Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Speaking at the end of three days of spring meetings in a posh resort in northeast Florida, Phillips said ACC coaches and athletic directors reached consensus on wanting to double the current\u00a0College Football Playoff\u00a0model.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you\u2019re leaving national championship-contending teams and schools out of the playoff, you don\u2019t have the right number,\u201d Phillips said. \u201cWe lived through it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Phillips pointed to\u00a0unbeaten Florida State\u00a0getting snubbed from a four-team CFP field in 2023 and\u00a0Notre Dame getting left out\u00a0of last year\u2019s 12-team model.<\/p>\n
\u201cNotre Dame was a CFP-worthy team this year; they just were,\u201d he said. \u201cThe other rationale is there is so much investment going on in the sport of football and in college athletics. \u2026 If you\u2019re going to ask presidents and chancellors and boards to continue to invest in their football programs, it\u2019s really important that they have hope, that they have an opportunity at the beginning of the season to get into the playoff.\u201d<\/p>\n
Coaches and administrators have clamored for more access to the lucrative and potentially job-saving playoff. They point to having just 12 playoff spots for 138 teams in the Football Bowl Subdivision, a miniscule percentage compared to many other collegiate sports or major professional leagues.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe more the merrier,\u201d Florida State athletic director Michael Alford said. \u201cThe more opportunities to get teams in and give student-athletes opportunities.\u201d<\/p>\n
Phillips also said television partner ESPN \u201chas been pretty clear with all of us that they\u2019d like it to stay at 12, maybe 14, but no higher than 16.\u201d<\/p>\n
No matter how much the ACC and other leagues support a 24-team playoff, the Big Ten and the Southeastern Conference have exclusive power to determine the CFP\u2019s future. Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti and the SEC\u2019s Greg Sankey have the ultimate say on any expansion.<\/p>\n
The SEC is pushing to expand to 16 teams, with an emphasis on at-large bids. The Big Ten supports 24 teams and initially wanted multiple automatic qualifiers from each conference.<\/p>\n
The playoff\u00a0expanded\u00a0from four to 12 teams in 2024, and after decision-makers failed to reach an\u00a0expansion agreement, the CFP will use the same model for the 2026-27 season. The discussion carries major implications for the college football calendar, including the start and end of the season and the role of money-making conference championship games.<\/p>\n
An NCAA committee last month recommended that FBS teams play a 12-game schedule over 14 weeks beginning in 2027 with the season starting on the Thursday of what is now designated Week Zero and ending the Saturday after Thanksgiving.<\/p>\n
Last week, the American Football Coaches Association\u00a0proposed changes\u00a0to the schedule that included eliminating conference championship games, reducing scheduled bye weeks from two to one and reducing the minimum number of days between games to no fewer than six.<\/p>\n
Sankey\u00a0stood firm earlier this week\u00a0on expanding to a 16-team CFP.<\/p>\n
Sankey said all changes in college athletics must come with appropriate research \u2014 something he believes the SEC has provided in support of a four-team expansion to 16. To Sankey, moving to 16 teams is an unknown, with one big question being whether an expanded playoff would make up for an SEC title game that generates more than $80 million a year for the powerhouse conference.<\/p>\n
The current CFP contract includes a deadline of Dec. 1, 2026, to make any changes for the following season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"AMELIA ISLAND \u2014 The Atlantic Coast Conference is backing the Big Ten\u2019s push for a 24-team playoff, commissioner…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":271851,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[111,28,3731,139,141,140,76046,110],"class_list":["post-271850","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-orlando","tag-college-sports","tag-florida","tag-florida-state-seminoles","tag-orlando","tag-orlando-headlines","tag-orlando-news","tag-social-sports","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271850","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=271850"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271850\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/271851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=271850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=271850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=271850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}