Opinion: Expanding College Football Playoff could be how programs find needed money
It wasn’t a surprise to see that an overwhelming majority of athletics directors would be in favor of expanding the College Football Playoff, according to an anonymous survey published this week by Stadium.
As good as the four-team playoff has been in expanding interest and generating revenue for the 130 schools in the Football Bowl Subdivision, the system’s inherent flaws – leaving out at least one of the five power conference champions and further stratifying a small group of elite programs from everyone else – would eventually create an organic push to include more teams. The only question was how long it would take for conference commissioners and college presidents to get on board.
But now the conversation has a new wild card: The economic fallout for athletic departments that are going to be cutting expenses and looking for ways to expand revenue once the coronavirus pandemic is over.
One of the most obvious ways to make more money? Expand the playoff, something 85 of the 112 respondents said they already favored.
Does that mean a decision of that magnitude is going to happen this summer or even within the next year? Unlikely. As you might have heard, college presidents are dealing with a few other more pressing issues at the moment.
But just think about it logically.
Even in the best-case scenario, the economics of college athletics are going to change significantly as a result of what’s happened over the past month. For athletic departments with big-time football programs, the loss of a few million dollars from having to cancel the NCAA basketball tournament and other spring sports is not a major issue. Some of them even have reserve funds built up that can cover shortfalls during the current fiscal year.
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The bigger concern, however, can be seen over the horizon as college athletics officials contemplate a world in which COVID-19 is largely gone but its impact on the larger economy presents a cascading series of problems.
