College Football Playoff expansion about revenue needed for survival

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College football’s administrative heavyweights are meeting in New Orleans beginning Wednesday, and it should come as no surprise where this is headed.

Revenue generation.

Or, this quick summation from universities to players: You want pay for play? We’re getting more games.

Not just an expansion of the College Football Playoff, which currently stands at 12 teams and could move to as many as 16. But an expansion of the championship weekend — which could evolve into a play-in week for the playoff.

Forget about CFP format. This is about financial survival.

One SEC athletic director, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the process, gave a rough outline of what championship weekend could look like to USA TODAY Sports. The Big Ten is also considering a similar structure.

● The top two seeds play in the conference championship game.

● The next six teams – determined by conference tiebreakers, if needed – will play in a No. 3 vs. No. 8, No. 4 vs. No. 7 and No. 5 vs. No. 6 format.

● The winners of those four games would move to the playoff. The losers would be available for at-large selections.

The obvious wrinkle: The loser of the championship game, the No. 2 team in the league, isn’t guaranteed a spot in the College Football Playoff.

But university presidents in the SEC don’t want to diminish winning the conference championship, nor do they want to minimize a high-demand television game that will command great interest in future media rights negotiations ― potentially as a stand alone game.

If the proposed format was set for 2024, Georgia and Texas would’ve played in the SEC championship game, with the loser needing an at-large bid to the CFP (just like the current setup).

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The remaining extended games: Mississippi at Tennessee, Texas A&M at Alabama and South Carolina at LSU, with the winners advancing to a 14- or 16-team College Football Playoff.

In an model, Oregon and Penn State would’ve played in the championship game, and the remaining CFP play-in games would’ve been Minnesota at Indiana, Michigan at Ohio State and Iowa at Illinois.

More games equals more revenue from media rights holders, and that currently seems like the safest move to offset losing as much as $20 million annually in pay for play funds from each school’s media rights earnings. Schools can spend as much as $20 million on player salaries (for all sports, not just football), but aren’t required to commit to that number.

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University presidents don’t want to invite private equity into their sports programs, and expanding football – and more than likely the NCAA men’s and women’s basketball tournaments, and College World Series baseball and softball tournaments – is the path of least resistance.

Just how potentially damaging to athletic departments is the $20 million pay-for-play budget? The SEC recently announced revenue sharing for the 2023-24 academic year, and that each school would receive $52.5 million from media rights revenue and bowl and NCAA tournament bonuses.

The $20 million revenue-sharing pool set to begin in the fall of 2025 is nearly 40 percent of each school’s media rights haul. That’s a staggering number for universities that have since paid nothing.

For the remaining two power conferences, the numbers are bleaker: ACC (an estimated $40 million payout per team) and Big 12 ($35 million) universities would spend at or more than 50 percent of each school’s media rights revenue.

The ACC, like the SEC and Big Ten, has gamed multiple formats to its championship weekend, and the Big 12 will do something similar if momentum turns that way. That’s potentially 16 games among power conferences for a weekend that now has four.

The 2026 CFP format more than likely will move to 14 teams, but the Big Ten has been leading a push for 16 teams. And the SEC isn’t exactly against it, because any expansion will likely include as many as four automatic qualifying spots each for the Big Ten and SEC.

Unlike the first CFP contract (which ends with the 2025 season), the SEC and Big Ten won’t need a unanimous vote from the Bowl Subdivision conferences and Notre Dame to change the format. Beginning with the 2026 contract, there are some within the industry who believe the Big Ten and SEC won’t even need a majority.

They’ll simply need to agree with each other to initiate change.

All media rights deals with the four power conferences have look-ins within the structure of the contracts that allow for increased revenue with increased high market value games. Multiple industry sources told USA TODAY Sports in September that the SEC and Big Ten are also in the early stages of expanding regular-season scheduling between the two super conferences in an effort to increase revenue.

So while they’ll meet this week and discuss the format for the new CFP contract that begins in 2026, there’s little doubt this is much more than the number of teams, the number of automatic qualifiers, seeding and campus-site games.

This is about finding a way to keep athletic departments afloat amid drastic financial change on the near horizon.

This is about financial survival.