Another article with some interesting points...

https://theathletic.com/2542475/2021/04/...-consider/

Quote:Also, either the players will need to get offered more to play more games — something schools probably can do with name, image and likeness laws that go into effect July 1 — or schools will have to play fewer regular-season games. The most likely games to be cut are the buy games, in which the home team pays a lot to a vastly inferior team to get pounded. Season-ticket holders don’t care about those games. Neither do TV networks. ESPN doesn’t want to have a football game on SEC Network Alternate 2. These add very little to the enterprise, so they’re easily sacrificed.

A Power 5 athletic director pointed out to me Sunday that schools would happily trade those games for the onslaught of season-ticket orders from fans who would want priority to buy tickets for home playoff games. What makes you more likely to buy season tickets? A game against The Citadel or UMass every year or the chance to be in position to secure tickets to a home playoff game against Penn State?

Quote:12-team College Football Playoff

The athletic director mentioned above texted a few months ago suggesting a 12-team format. When I suggested that might be a little big, the AD broke down pretty succinctly why every team would care down the stretch in the regular season: “Being one through four is important because of byes,” the AD wrote. “Five through eight is important because of hosting the first round. Nine through 12 is important because you’re in the Playoff.”

That logic makes sense. It also makes sense because it feels recently as if No. 4 has more in common with No. 12 than it does with No. 1. But what would make 12 teams really fun is a year when the teams in the top 12 are all imperfect in some way.

Let’s use the same auto-bid rules we’d use in the eight- and 10-team formats: Power 5 champs get in and the highest-ranked Group of 5 champ gets in.

The article goes through every permutation from 6 through 16 and with multiple set ups. The fact that there's a P5 AD who texted that 12 team scenario that's effectively the 5-1-6 scenario makes me think that's the leader in the clubhouse heading into whenever this happens.

I also saw speculation that ESPN would willingly sign up for this, and do so early, because a) they don't want these rights to go into the open market (CFP games outdraw NBA finals games) and b) locking them into ESPN will justify them getting maximum payment from cable operators and their streaming services and c) it increases the value of every championship game they already own. And furthermore, that this will decrease the likelihood of players opting out of postseason games. There's also speculation that this will not kill all of the bowl games as we think, since ESPN will still make money on them as TV programs because of gambling implications.

I now think this is probably going to happen by 2023.

USFFan