The Times Are Changing: An Expanded Playoff and SCOTUS Decision Are Necessary To Save College Sports

“Come gather ‘round people wherever you roam And admit that the waters around you have grown And accept it that soon you’ll drenched to the bone

If your time to you is worth savin’ Then you better start swimmin’ Or you’ll sink like a stone For the times they are a-changin’” -- Bob Dylan

Two weeks ago, four of the most powerful men in college sports unexpectedly announced a plan to expand the College Football Playoff from four to 12 teams. It wasn’t so much that SEC commissioner Greg Sankey, Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby, Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick and Mountain West commissioner Craig Thompson had cobbled together a plan to expand the playoff that was surprising. It was the number of teams and the sense of urgency that accompanied their plan.

Two weeks later the United States Supreme Court ruled unanimously in favor of the plaintiff in the case of the NCAA vs. Alston. That the NCAA would lose another case before the Supreme Court surprised no one. That it was a 9-0 vote instead of the usual conservative/liberal split was surprising to the public, unnerving for the NCAA.

Two events, two weeks apart. Seemingly unrelated or so it seems at a casual glance.

The reality is expansion of the College Football Playoff and a Supreme Court decision that signals the NCAA is sinking like a rock are tied together by an unseen umbilical cord. The Supreme Court decision wasn’t about the playoff, but because of this and the many other court cases lining up against the NCAA – many of them more consequential than the NCAA vs. Alston and all of whom the NCAA is about 99 percent certain to lose – an expanded playoff is a necessity.

To understand the significance of both events, start first with the playoff.

Even before Alabama’s crushing victory over Ohio State to win the national championship in what can only be described as the final game of perhaps the most bizarre season in college football history, there were warning signs that the four-team playoff format in place since 2014 was grinding to a pedestrian standstill. Television ratings, which skyrocketed in those first two playoffs when Ohio State won in 2014 and Alabama took the 2015 title, were leaking like a sieve, largely because it had become so repetitive that you could almost pencil in three of the yearly final four participants – Alabama, Clemson and Ohio State.

There is nothing wrong with saying Alabama, Clemson and Ohio State have elevated their programs to a level that is far superior to the rest of the country but their success at the expense of the other 127 teams that make up Division I football has had a numbing effect on everyone else. Back in the 1300s, the English poet/author Geoffrey Chaucer wrote in The Canterbury Tales, “Familiarity breeds contempt.” College football hasn’t yet reached the contempt stage but continuation of the same old, same old will have that effect. The College Football Playoff Board of Managers, the 11 university presidents who actually run the playoff, were all too aware that some changes needed to be made and this was before they understood the far-reaching financial catastrophe caused by the global COVID-19 pandemic which wreaked such havoc with athletic department budgets that even a heavily endowed school like Stanford felt the need to axe 11 of its 36 scholarship sports.

The adverse effects of the pandemic and concerns that the NCAA is a sinking ship have created a sense of financial urgency like never before. The four-team College Football Playoff, which generates somewhere in the neighborhood of $600 million annually of which $97 million finds its way to the 65 teams that make up the Group of Five, won’t be able to compensate for the huge loss of revenue by every Division I team. That is why the Board of Managers appointed the working group to come up with an expansion proposal more than a year ago. By making Thompson, a Group of Five conference commissioner, part of the working group it was a clear indication that an expanded playoff had to be more inclusive.

Inspiration was drawn from the one thing the NCAA does consistently well – the Division I Men’s Basketball Tournament, a cash cow that generates more than $1 billion a year. While the tournament was the exclusive domain of conference champions and select independents through 1974 when only 25 teams filled out the brackets, the decision to expand to 64 teams was an absolute stroke of genius. March Madness has become a three-weekend event that completely captivates the country. The usual suspects – champions from the power conferences – win the tournament every year but one reason so much excitement is generated is the hope that one of these years a true Cinderella will go unbeaten for three straight weekends and dream the impossible dream.

The four-team format of the College Football Playoff snubs its nose at Cinderella. UCF went 14-0 in 2017 without so much as a sniff of the playoff. When the Knights bushwhacked Auburn in the Peach Bowl, then UCF athletic director Danny White declared the Knights national champions since they were the only undefeated team still standing in Division I. UCF ran the regular season table in 2018 and won the American Athletic Conference championship game but even a 27-game winning streak couldn’t get a seat at the playoff table. A year ago both Cincinnati and Coastal Carolina were unbeaten in the regular season. Cincinnati got a New Year’s Six bowl game as a consolation. Coastal had to settle for something called the Cure Bowl in Orlando.

The argument against expanding to even a four-team playoff was that it would dilute the importance of the regular season. The task for the working group was to find a formula that would neither take away from the regular season or diminish the playoff by adding teams that don’t stand a chance of winning. Of course, these same arguments were made when the NCAA expanded the basketball tournament to 32 teams and each step of the way until the magic number of 64 was found.

Even before Alabama routed Ohio State for the national title back in January, the working group was privately narrowing down playoff formats. Their very existence was on a need to know basis but quietly they explored numerous avenues to determine a format that would infuse much-needed revenue to all 130 teams in Division I. It was thought for the longest time that when the playoff expanded it would take a walk before you run approach, starting with six or eight teams to set the stage for eventual expansion to 16 teams.

Sankey and the group concluded that six teams was too few, eight didn’t allow for enough at-large teams and that 16 was too many. When they came out with their 12-team proposal, initial reaction was it was awkward, but further investigation showed they got the number just right. There are no automatic bids. The champions of the six highest-rated conferences will be invited with the brackets completed by six at-large teams. Since there are only five power conferences, it means at least one Group of Five champ will be included every year, hence Cinderella has an invitation to the ball. Had the 12-team playoff been in place in 2020, both Cincinnati (American Athletic Conference) and Coastal Carolina (Sun Belt) would have been in the tournament and Pac-12 champ Oregon would have stayed home.

The top four seeded teams will receive a first round bye. First round games will be played on campus, hosted by teams seeded 5-8. Until Notre Dame elects to join a conference the Irish will never be one of the top four seeded teams and can only host a first round game if seeded 5-8.

The proposal has been submitted to the Board of Managers which gave it a rubber stamp to find and eliminate flaws so that a workable scenario can be presented to ESPN, which has exclusive negotiating rights until the current contract expires. ESPN can reject the 12-team proposal but at the risk that when their contract with the CFB expires they may be outbid by another network, or avoid the possibility of losing by tearing up the existing contract and possibly doubling or tripling the money. Some economists project the television rights could sell for as much as $2 billion a year, offering a hefty cash infusion to all 130 teams that make up Division I. Thompson almost certainly wouldn’t have been part of the working group if the Group of Five weren’t assured of a larger slice of the financial pie than they are in the current contract.

The ruling by the Supreme Court in NCAA vs. Alston explains why playoff expansion, future court rulings and even the continuing existence of the NCAA are all tied together. While this ruling doesn’t address name, image and likeness (NIL) and paying athletes, this was a torpedo to the bow of the Good Ship NCAA. The ruling only addressing the NCAA’s ability to cap benefits of an educational nature to student athletes. Under current rules, a scholarship can only provide room, board, tuition, books, fees and cost of attendance. The NCAA vs. Alston decision says a school like the University of Florida has the right to pay for things like laptop computers, more tutoring and academic support, semesters abroad and anything else that falls under the educational umbrella for a student athlete.

The cost of additional educational benefits won’t come cheap, nor will NIL or paying players for what amounts to a full-time job while they go to school. The model that has been the foundation of college athletics for decades is about to be completely scrapped. Supreme Court justice Brett Kavanaugh’s written opinion in the Alston case pretty much sums up how the court is likely to vote in future cases and it doesn’t look good at all for the NCAA.

Kavanaugh wrote, “The NCAA business model would be flatly illegal in almost any other industry in America. It is highly questionable whether the NCAA and its member colleges can justify not paying student athletes a fair share of the revenues.”

After all, it is the athletes who take all the risks and provide the entertainment that results in television contracts, full stadiums occupied by fans who pay premium ticket prices, booster fees and advertising and sponsorship dollars that are worth collective billions. It is also the athletes who, under current NCAA rules, can’t get school-provided health care after eligibility is expired for injuries suffered while representing their school. Under the current rules, it’s a violation to pay for the continuing education of an athlete who didn’t graduate before eligibility was used up. It doesn’t seem to matter to the NCAA that sports are, for all practical purposes, a 40-hour (or more) work week that makes school almost of secondary importance.

These aren’t new issues. They’ve been around for decades. Had the NCAA addressed long term health care and continuing education some 25 years ago when athletes were literally begging for change, the organization wouldn’t necessarily be on the verge of going belly up. Rather than sit down, talk to athletes and adjust the rules to meet changing times, the NCAA chose to fight change in court where it has met consistently with defeat.

And, with each lost court case, the NCAA has lost its ability to prevent athletes from going after what they see is their fair share of the revenues. The kids aren’t dummies. They see athletic budgets like the ones at Texas and Texas A&M in excess of $200 million a year. They see coaches such as Mike Kryzyzewski (Duke basketball), Nick Saban (Alabama football) and John Calipari (Kentucky basketball) being paid more than $9 million a year and flying private jets all over the country.

And, until the NCAA vs. Alston, it was impossible for their athletic department to buy them a laptop that is necessary for classes. This is precisely why the College Football Playoff has to expand, the sooner the better. What’s ahead for every athletic department in Division I will come at a price and doubling or tripling the revenues from the playoff might not cover the cost. But, it is the most logical place to begin.

That brings us to the final question: What is going to happen to the NCAA?

The beatdown at the Supreme Court is just setback for the NCAA and its bloated bureaucracy. At some point you would think the colleges and universities that make up the membership of the NCAA would demand better leadership than what Mark Emmert has provided. Emmert, like predecessors Cedric Dempsey and Myles Brand, chooses to do battle in court where it inevitably loses. It’s an organization that even with insurmountable and indisputable evidence in the college basketball corruption trial from FBI wiretaps and Federal Court transcripts can’t seem to send a Notice of Allegations to LSU. Even with an overwhelming majority of coaches in every sport complaining that recruiting rules need to be streamlined with a large measure of common sense applied, the NCAA only adds to its ridiculously large rulebook. That forces every school in Division I to spend money on lawyers for compliance that could be spent addressing the needs of its athletes.

College football pays the freight for the 130 teams that make up Division I football. This latest Supreme Court decision and decisions that will soon be coming down the pike should tell the conference commissioners, school presidents and athletic directors that it’s time to leave. Division I cannot stay hitched to an incompetent organization that is more concerned with going to court than it is with finding practical solutions.

As Bob Dylan wrote, the times they are-a changing. It’s unfortunate that the NCAA hasn’t changed with the times because it is a horse and buggy in an era when Tesla is going to manufacture an electric powered roadster capable of going from 0-60 in 1.9 seconds. College sports as we know them today won’t exist in another five years. If they exist at all it will not be because the NCAA did anything to save them but rather common sense prevailed and they departed the organization to strike out on their own, leaving the NCAA to do its marvelous Don Quixote impersonation by charging up a hill to do battle with a windmill.