With CFP expansion talks ongoing, presidential committee pushing for 24-team field

DALLAS — This week, members of the College Football Playoff governance committee — the 10 FBS conference commissioners and Notre Dame’s athletic director — gather here at their annual spring meetings, pitted in a room for more than 15 hours over two days with the responsibility to govern the industry’s most valuable product. For more than a decade now, the committee has lived beneath the cloud of a never-ending discussion over postseason expansion — from two teams to four to the current iteration of 12 and, now, the year-long public spat over the next edition of the CFP: 16 or 24. Through the years, like an invisible fog, the argument lingers, having survived the job term of the committee’s own participants.

But as meetings begin here this week, something altogether new has surfaced. The CFP committee is not the only group of highly placed executives taking an interest in playoff expansion. “We asked the government for help with NIL,” said one CFP committee member recently, “and now they’re involved in the playoff.

” Is Congress and the federal government prying into the College Football Playoff? Not exactly. However, a 14-person presidential “media” committee — its existence supported by the White House — is holding real conversations about the future of the postseason.

In fact, in a fascinating discussion that unfolded last week, the presidential committee identified a variety of ways that the industry can generate more revenue to help financially stressed schools. One of those: Expand the playoff to 24 teams. “I think it’s accurate to say that there is a coalescing around 24,” said one high-placed stakeholder who is part of both the CFP governance committee and the presidential group.