A minute after Michigan won the national championship trophy in Houston, the school football season — and the predictions that come with it — have been postponed to 2024.
If ever there was a year in the year 2000 in high school football, that was it; however, the lights didn’t go out at NRG Stadium and the game began its adventure toward an unprecedented replacement that includes a radical realignment of the 12-team meetings and playoffs that will once again adjust the way the champion is crowned.
Ready or not, it is.
“The replacement is real,” SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey said. “You can run away from him or kiss him. “
From a bench without retired Alabama workout player Nick Saban to an Atlantic Coast convention that includes Pacific Coast groups, school football will look very different this fall, even for those immersed in it for a living. The new expanded playoffs will begin before Christmas and end on January 20, 2025, Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
“This is a wonderful year,” said Jon Steinbrecher, commissioner of the Mid-American Conference. “It’s an evolution of the playoffs. That’s no small feat. “
Here’s an explanation of all the important things enthusiasts can expect to be replaced this fall.
Let’s start with the basics, because even that’s nothing you’ve ever seen before.
Beginning with the 2024 season, the Big Ten will be the largest conference in the country with 18 teams, and the ACC — with the additions of SMU, Cal and Stanford — will follow with 17 teams. The SEC and Big 12 will each have 16 teams.
The Pac-12? Well, it’s down to Oregon State and Washington State, which will have a scheduling agreement with the Mountain West Conference.
The SEC will include: Alabama, Arkansas, Auburn, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, LSU, Mississippi State, Missouri, Ole Miss, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Texas A&M, Vanderbilt.
The big 12 will include: Arizona, State of Arizona, Baylor, BYU, Cincinnati, Colorado, Houston, State of Iowa, Kansas, State of Kansas, State of Oklahoma, TCU, Texas Tech, UCF, Utah, West Virginia.
The Big Ten will include: Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Maryland, Michigan, Michigan State, Minnesota, Nebraska, Northwestern, Ohio State, Penn State, Purdue, Rutgers, Wisconsin, UCLA, USC, Oregon, and Washington.
The ACC will include: Boston College, Cal, Clemson, Duke, Florida State, Georgia Tech, Louisville, Miami, NC State, North Carolina, Pittsburgh, SMU, Stanford, Syracuse, Virginia, Virginia Tech, Wake Forest.
Neither of them will have a division, so the league’s two most sensible groups will face off against others in their respective convention championship games. Outgoing American Athletic Conference commissioner Mike Aresco said he believes the more history and rivalries fade, the love for the game will remain.
“People like to watch the games,” Aresco said. “If USC plays Ohio State, are other people going to say, ‘yes, it’s a Big Ten game now, I don’t care’?I don’t think so. This game has influence in America, more than any other game.
First, exhale: An undefeated Power Five champion like Florida State will never be left out again.
“The automatic convention champions everything that is vital to the CEC, and I know it is vital to the other meetings as well,” said CEC Commissioner Jim Phillips. “It’s reassuring for everybody. “
The 11 presidents and chancellors who have ultimate authority over the playoffs are expected to soon approve a style that rewards the five most sensible convention champions and the next seven highest-ranked groups. This puts a renewed emphasis on convention championship matches and also promises a spot. in the top 12 teams to the highest-ranked champion of Group Five, a primary replacement for the four-team system, in which the only guarantee for the best champion of the Gfive is a New Year’s Bowl Six.
“Our leagues will have their chance,” Aresco said.
The four highest-ranked conference champions will earn the top-four seeds and receive a first-round bye. The other eight teams will play in the first round, with the higher seeds hosting the lower seeds either on campus or “at other sites designated by the higher-seeded institution.”
This means that any team that doesn’t have the luxury of a first-round break will want to win 4 straight games to win the national championship. If a team lost its convention championship game and played 4 straight games in the playoffs, it would have played an unprecedented 17 games.
(And now you think about it. )
Be careful not to confuse the rating with the variety committee rating. The 13-member committee will continue to release its top 2five weekly, which will be used to determine the highest-ranked convention champions. that if Georgia wins the SEC and is ranked No. 1 in the variety committee, and Alabama loses that game and is No. 3 in the CFP rankings (or even No. 2!), the Tide will be the fifth seed standard at three other conventions. champions and Georgia.
(Read it again, please. )
Historically, the selection committee releases six rankings, which would likely begin this year on Nov. 5, but that is expected to be determined in April at the annual CFP spring meeting. As of now, there is no minimum ranking requirement for the five highest-ranked conference champions. Any independent like Notre Dame cannot earn a first-round bye because it cannot win a conference title. That also applies to Washington State and Oregon State, which have a temporary scheduling arrangement with the Mountain West and can compete for the national championship, but aren’t eligible to win the MWC and don’t constitute a league of their own, per NCAA and CFP rules.
With the massive number of Big Ten and SEC teams, it’s conceivable that those leagues would fill the pack.
“We’ve been given a lot of depth,” Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti said. “I expect we to have very strong representation in the playoffs. I think our coaches are waiting for it, our ADs are waiting for it. Our enthusiasts are waiting for you. We’re good, we’re deep and that’s the most productive advantage. “
Steinbrecher said, “If they win, they win it. “
“I’m sure you’ll earn your place in this,” he said. “I’m not entirely convinced that’s going to be the case [a majority of the SEC’s Big Ten], but we’ll see how it plays out. “
Traditionally, bowling season begins on the Saturday following convention games, which now also corresponds to the start of the playoffs (see above). Nick Carparelli, executive director of Bowl Season, said the organization will meet with convention commissioners and ESPN in late January to get started earlier.
“It provides the opportunity for some groups that have just qualified for bowling and are excited about the opportunity to play earlier and then be able to continue their recruitment,” Carparelli said. “And maybe some of the coming move portal will play that last game because they possibly won’t have to wait too long and then move on and do what’s most productive for them after that. “
The NCAA football competitions committee meets in late February, but a final resolution is unlikely to be passed before late spring.
The existing school football schedule in December is very busy. The move-in window opened on Dec. 4, the day after the committee announced the playoff brackets and two days after the convention naming games. Players were allowed to move in until Jan. 2, the day after the CFP semifinals. Among all this, early signing day, December 20th.
“The problem is not the bowls or the bowl system,” Carparelli said. “The problem is the circumstances that we’ve allowed to be created around it.”
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New freshmen monitored the movement portal and movements monitored signature classes. Fans watched the bowling games of some of their star players.
“I think the hiring schedule in December wants to change,” Sankey said. “It’s nothing new for me to say. We are in a position to do anything about it. We’re going to finish some time as a league and finish concepts behind. The early signing date can’t stay where it is. It’s not fair to the highest level groups. “Where the other 110 groups in the Bowl or FCS subdivision are occupied, they must be careful that this end of football determines fate. The concept that this is a complicated time is a reality. “
The six New Year’s bowls, namely the Cotton, Party, Peach, Pink, Sugar and Orange bowls, will remain part of the CFP in 2024 and 2025, but commissioners have yet to publicly announce how they will figure in the rotation of the next contract.
“There’s a lot of things that are still going to be discussed, and it’s an issue that still wants to be looked at,” said Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark, “however, from my perspective, there’s a wonderful history with the New Year’s Six. In some ways, “they give credibility to those games because there’s a lot of awareness around them. There will be more conversations, but I’m sure those games will be part of the future. “
Phillips has been candid about bowling outdoors at the New Year’s Six and said delegates continue to communicate about how to keep bowling season healthy, while also wondering if more than 40 balls are sustainable.
“Likely not,” Phillips said.
“I just think if we don’t pay attention to it, it’s going to hurt school football,” he said. “There have been a lot of smart football groups at the end of the year who want the chance to keep playing, and those new playoffs will whet the appetite of many, but they will only quench the thirst of the 12. . . . There will be other smart groups that have been left out, so we want to check it out to see what we’ve done. noticed through the existing four-way MFF model, where we now have the movement portal, cancellations at some point higher rate than before. There have been medical reasons why student-athletes haven’t played as well. This is something we want to use as a component of the decision-making procedure on what we do with the rest of the bowling system.
To be eligible for the bowl, a school will need to have a minimum of six wins with an Array500 win percentage. In 2023, only one team was missing from the bowls and Minnesota 5-7 was upgraded. In 2022, Rice was the only team to update it, and in 2021, there was an extra team due to the lingering effects of COVID-10.
“Recent ancient knowledge tells us that we are in the right number to bowl,” Carparelli said. “It’s highly unlikely that we’ll know at the start of the season how many bowling eligible groups they have at the end, but with the data we have, we can be at exactly the right number. “
Carparelli said the playoffs don’t have to be an “either/or” between the CFP and the rest of the bowls.
“It’s both combined,” he said. “They both play a really important role in college football.”
Conference championships, in theory, deserve to generate more interest, given that the five most sensible winners will get a playoff berth and a first-round bye. None of the commissioners indicated that there was a preference for giving up such valuable assets. at least not in the near future.
“We’re determined to play a championship game,” Petitti said of the Big Ten. “I think in the design we’re talking about, there’s still enough to play for. It means anything to win the Big Ten championship. ” Our enthusiasts really play the game and love it. We’ve noticed that this year. And the strength steadily, this will only increase with a non-split format. Now you’re pairing two really strong teams. “
Yormark called it “a tentpole moment” for the Big 12.
“Will this be replaced over time? I don’t know,” he said. “I love our game. Create a glorious narrative. If you take a look at this year’s game of champions, the highest attendance ever. The highest grossing ever, it created a lot of excitement, more social media engagement than any other champions game in our history. But with an ever-changing landscape, we’ll have to see what happens in the future.
It wouldn’t be the same without his press conferences, with the coach next to his trusty Coca-Cola bottle, which “isn’t a crystal ball,” right?
Even Saban doesn’t know what Alabama will look like when the Kalen DeBoer era begins this fall, but it does mean that his retirement will have a ripple effect on the entire game, from the practice trees he planted to a door he may have opened for other SEC groups on the verge of achieving the naming game.
(Cough, cough, Lane Kiffin. )
With Oklahoma and Texas joining the convention, the SEC will split its divisions this fall and the groups will play 8 convention games plus a required opponent from the ACC, Big Ten, Big 12 or “major independent. ” With the 16-team league, the fierce chase-fest of Alabama in the now-defunct SEC West will change. That probably wouldn’t necessarily make things easier, as LSU still faces the Tide, Ole Miss and Oklahoma. Ole Miss did not play Alabama, but hosted Georgia and traveled to LSU. Georgia plays Alabama in the regular season, along with Texas.
The top two teams that emerge from this slugfest will play for the SEC title.
Saban has been the face of the SEC, and while Georgia coach Kirthrough Smart has closed the hole at the Tide by winning two of the last three national names, Saban has set the bar higher by winning six of his seven names in Tuscaloosa. Even Georgia has a long way to go before they can fit into that dynasty, even if Saban will no longer be the one to stop them from fitting into the SEC’s name.
In addition to Saban’s replacement, there will also be new faces in the MFF leadership. CFP Executive Director Bill Hancock has announced his retirement and will be replaced by Lt. Gen. Richard M. Clark, who is currently the superintendent of the Air Force Academy.
In the AAC, Aresco is retiring, and the conference is in the midst of a search for his replacement.
Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick has also announced his retirement, and will be replaced by NBC Sports Group chairman and Notre Dame alum Pete Bevacqua. Both Aresco and Swarbrick are members of the CFP management committee.
For years, some leaders in college athletics have pushed for FBS football to operate outside of the NCAA’s governance structure. In 2020, the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics recommended an organization called the National College Football Association govern FBS football through revenue it generates from the CFP media contract.
FBS football is currently the only collegiate sport that runs its championship and all of its revenue outside of the NCAA. While there hasn’t been enough support for the sport to operate under the purview of the CFP, there are still commissioners and athletic directors who believe the CFP should have more authority moving forward.
“I hope it becomes more of a business, like a convention or the NCAA, and that it grows beyond simple gaming operations,” Mountain West Commissioner Gloria Nevarez said. “Right now, there are big games, events, but also a revenue distribution. I’d like to see us attach the regulations of the game, the policy around the game. The NCAA has academics, transfers, all of that, but I’d like to see the PCP become more directly integrated into policymaking, because lately it exists on the periphery, but it has all the right people in the room. “
Petitti said that the governance of the game is his priority right now.
“Right now I would say the priority is getting the 12-team playoff right,” Petitti said. “That’s the focus. You’re asking it to do a lot more. I know it’s been talked about a lot, but my focus in terms of how I try to contribute in the room and how to represent the Big Ten is to make sure we do that right first.”
Phillips, who was the only Power Five commissioner to serve on the NCAA’s Constitution and Transformation (2022) committees, said there were some benefits if the CFP operated outside of the NCAA. Phillips said “so far it’s worked,” but commissioners will continue to assess whether this remains unchanged.
“What effect does this have on other sports?” said Phillips, who will be president of the Collegiate Commissioners Association this summer. “What does it mean for other sports, for other student-athletes and coaches who play those sports, to have just one?I’m not saying positive or negative, however, all of that should be considered as a whole and we will. doing it. “