A subcommittee tasked with evaluating the future format of the College Football Playoff recommended on Thursday a drastic change that would broaden the bracket to 12 teams split evenly between conference champions and at-large bids. Termed “the first step in a long process,” the recommendation would bypass a simple doubling of the current four-team format and revolutionize the final stages of college football’s race for the national championship, while raising concerns over whether such expansion would further dilute the stakes at play during the regular season. The proposal came from the four-person expansion working group of Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby, Mountain West commissioner Craig Thompson, SEC commissioner Greg Sankey and Notre Dame athletics director Jack Swarbrick.”This proposal at its heart was created to create more participation for more schools and more players,” said College Football Playoff executive director Bill Hancock. “In a nutshell, that’s the working group’s message: more participation.”Under the recommendation, the bracket would consist of the six top-ranked conference champions and six at-large bids. No conference would automatically qualify for the playoff, and there would be no cap on the number of participants from one conference. The rankings would still be determined by the selection committee. The four highest-ranked conference champions would be given a bye into the “second round” of games to face the winners of games matching the next eight seeds in games played at the home stadium of the higher-ranked team. The quarterfinals, semifinals and finals would then be played at a neutral venue. (The current format features all games at neutral-site locations.)That portion of the recommendation could create controversy. A non-league champion ranked higher in the playoff rankings than a conference winner would not be eligible for a first-round bye, for example. In addition, requiring a conference championship to finish in the top four would cause trouble for an independent program such as Notre Dame, which would be ineligible for a bye and would need to win four straight games to claim the national championship.”I look forward to never hearing again about how we played one less game or don’t have a conference championship,” Swarbrick said. The group’s proposal suggested playing first-round games “sometime during the two-week period after conference championship games,” followed by the quarterfinals on either Jan. 1 or Jan. 2, depending on whether New Year’s Day falls on a Sunday, and on the following day. The suggested bracket would not be adjusted to avoid regular-season rematches or games between teams from the same conference, which has been a guiding principle during the four-team era, and the seeding would remain in effect across each round.
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