The executive director of the school football playoffs, Bill Hancock, laughed at the redefinition of the PSC’s promotional slogan on Monday: Who’s taking part? Who, actually.
Apparently, not Big Ten and Pac-12. For the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic entered the entire 2020 school football season, the PSC appears to be moving towards some basic conclusions. On Monday, he announced the dates of his CFP Rankings exhibitions set for this fall.
If there is a season, the school’s football playoffs will be held as scheduled. The PSC’s variety committee will only include the 76 groups that will play this fall, Hancock said. These come with groups from ACC, BIg 12, SEC, American, Conference USA and Sun Belt, as well as some independents.
The PSC more than mentioned in a tweet the hashtag 2021Miami. Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, Florida, is the site of the National CFP Championship scheduled for January 11, 2021.
The name doesn’t match, but the dates and hosts of the PSC semi-finals and the six New Year’s bowls remain in place. The Rose Bowl and Sugar Bowl will serve as semi-final venues with games on January 1, 2021.
There will probably be only one tiebreaker despite Big Ten and Pac-12’s attempts to play in the spring of 2021. It is not known how it would work, even if a tiebreaker was added this spring. This committee source asked about two playoffs, one after the fall of 2020 and the spring of 2021.
“We made the decision,” a member of the PSC’s school football control committee told CBS Sports. “We’re moving forward with the original plan [which is scheduled for this fall].”
Another member of the committee reported that no such resolution had been taken. None of the committee members wanted to be known for the delicateness of the situation.
“These are times. There may be results,” said the first member of the committee. “But for now, we’re on the path that’s been charted before.”
The committee is composed of the 10 FBS convention commissioners plus Notre Dame’s athletic director, Jack Swarbrick. “Manage the day-to-day operations of the company”, according to the PSC website.
“Whatever [the first source of the committee] is his opinion,” Hancock, who added, “it’s too early to speculate.”
Clearly the trend is to a single move after the fall season. While the exclusion of Big Ten and Pac-12 (plus Mountain West and MAC) is expected, as they will take over this fall, the PSC gave a definition to a dubious season on Monday.
PSC’s qualification begins on November 17 and culminates with the announcement on 20 December of the seventh tranche of the CFP. The date of December 20 has already been extended by two weeks to take into account the late convention championship games, which will take up position as expired on December 19.
A source told CBS Sports that those dates were simply “reserved spaces” in case the season was replaced by the virus.
There’s no one to cancel the playoffs, Hancock said.
“Like so many other things at COVID, it’s sensible to wait as long as possible to make decisions,” he said. “I suspect we could wait as late as – I don’t need to put a date on it – wait a long time, see what happens.”
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