For two long years, the four men kept their mission a secret.
Only a select group knew that conference commissioners Bob Bowlsby, Greg Sankey and Craig Thompson, as well as Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick, were tasked to explore proposals to expand the College Football Playoff. They examined well over 100 postseason formats, even kept specifics of the meetings hidden from their fellow commissioners and, after rigorous debate as well as data-driven analysis, agreed on a concept they thought was fair to each entity in college football: the Power 5, the Group of 5, the bowls and the fans.
And then, all hell broke loose.
The Pac-12 hired a new commissioner who is unafraid of publicly rattling the status quo. A wave of conference realignment, triggered by the impending SEC departures of Texas and Oklahoma, washed through the sport. And then, as if this wasn’t enough, three power conferences, each with a relatively new commissioner, announced the formation of a pact, the Alliance, that seems to have further divided the executive branch of college sports.
“We live in interesting times. I don’t know whether that is a curse or blessing,” says Mike Aresco, commissioner for the Group of 5’s American Athletic Conference. “A lot of things are converging at the same time. The system is under stress right now. But you deal with it. You don’t take it personally. You work through it.”
The shifting landscape, hurt feelings and public barbs have cast a shadow of doubt that leaders can agree both on a new playoff concept and the timing of expansion itself.
On Wednesday in Dallas, the CFP management committee—the 10 FBS commissioners plus Swarbrick—is scheduled to further explore the expansion issue. The hope is that it can create enough progress to bring a proposed recommendation to a scheduled meeting in Chicago next Tuesday with the CFP board of managers, a group of school presidents and the ultimate decision-makers in the playoff hierarchy.
Wednesday’s meeting marks the commissioners’ first face-to-face interaction since a cascade of decisions has disrupted college sports, though at least two of them will participate virtually (Pac-12 commissioner George Kliavkoff and C-USA commissioner Judy MacLeod).
They plan to review feedback from their respective member schools on the proposed 12-team expansion model and discuss how realignment impacts any future changes. Members of the four-man subcommittee, Swarbrick, Sankey, Bowlsby and Thompson, may give a more detailed explanation on how they arrived at the 12-team concept.
Lastly, there will likely be intense discussion about their disagreements, much of which has been aired across media platforms.
“We will discuss the things I’m reading about,” says Sankey, commissioner of the SEC. “I thought these things would be talked about in the room, but people have chosen to state their positions publicly. If everybody has to get everything on their Christmas list, we probably won’t come to a decision. It won’t be a happy Christmas morning.
“But if people are willing to compromise and engage in meaningful dialogue, which the format subcommittee certainly did, there’s an opportunity.”
