Latest / The Jake Wimberly Podcast / Kelley Ford on the Future of the College Football Playoff

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Kelley Ford on the Future of the College Football Playoff · The Jake Wimberly Podcast

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  Thirty six months Kelly Ford on your radio Tuesday edition of the program. Make
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  sure to find him on exit, k Ford Ratings, k Ford Ratings dot
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  com and The Lines dot com. You would have to think when you look
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  at Greg Sankie and Tony Petitti with the Big Ten, that they have already
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  had these conversations probably coming out and saying, hey, the Big Ten and
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  the SEC are now partners in some degree. You would think legalities they have
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  probably discussed or that's going on what they can do, because you know,
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  Sankie said it himself and I'm paraphrasing that, Hey, look, we've got
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  to even look at these television contracts. We're not sure that we want to
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  jump into a long extended television contract with the College Football Playoff. You know,
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  even though we're expanding past twenty twenty five twenty twenty six, we don't
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  want other teams coming in like SMU and other teams, you know, a
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  group of five to split this revenue. You would have to think at least
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  the governance if they're talking about doing something different, that those conversations privately have
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  probably been brewing for several months, if not longer than that. Yeah,
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  I think what we've seen really since great thank you became the messioner of the
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  SCC, I mean what almost a decade ago now. For my flives,
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  he's been at the forefront. He's been forward thinking, he has been proactive
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  in the SEC's best interest. And again, as someone who works in a
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  Division one conference office, it is the commissioner's job of any conference to do
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  what's in the best interests of the member institutions of that conference. What the
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  SEC is doing, what the Big ten are doing right now, I do
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  believe are in the best interests, especially especially financially, of those two entities.
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  Where the larger philosophical question comes in for many across the country, including
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  myself as a college football fan, is are these things in the best interests
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  of the college football as a sport or college athletics as an enterprise. But
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  again, if we're talking just college football, are these changes? Are these
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  proposals in the best interests of the sport of college football as a whole?
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  My personal opinion is that they are not. However, I do understand why
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  these decisions are being made by these conference commissioners of these Power five Power four
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  conferences, because they're charge was one thing, generating revenue and making great experiences
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  for their student athletes and their member institutions. And there's nothing in their job
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  description that says you should do things and act in accordance with what's going to
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  lead to the outcomes that are in the best interest of the college athletics enterprise
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  as a whole or the sport of college football. And so until we can
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  somehow figure out a way to merge the best interest of the Big ten of
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  the SEC with the best interests of the sport, we're going to continue to
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  see these two paths going down in the separate direction. And ultimately, Jake,
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  I think what it might end up being is a fracturing of FBS football
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  at the highest level. And you now have more than what half of the
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  members involved in sbsosible. Now they're no longer designated as the top tier of
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  college football. Could there be some benefits to that, sure, I'm not
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  sure that the benefits way the negatives, though, at least with the fact
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  that we have in front of us today. Heather Dinnich put this out on
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  ESPN. I saw you responded to it, you know, and I'm paraphrasing
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  again. While we stay at twelve teams, you think it's going to go
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  higher than twelve. Probably, I would have to say it probably will.
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  As far as the number of participants, at some point, I think we
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  will go beyond twelve. Yeah, for as long as we have this national
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  playoff jig, I guess that's the caveat here. If the Big ten and
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  the SDC grow to you know, twenty or twenty four teams and they start
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  doing their each and they start doing their own thing and kind of cut everybody
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  else out, that's a whole different conversation. For as long as we have
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  the current construction of a Power four and a group of five or whatever that
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  the numbers break down at. I do believe that really the only thing that
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  I know for certain about college football is that the playoff is going to continue
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  to expand. You look at the history of college football. From eighteen sixty
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  nine until nineteen ninety seven, there was no playoff system. It was you
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  played the regular season. Then we introduced ball. As we get going in
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  the college football history, and that ultimately ends up with a couple of polls
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  declaring who the national champions are. Nineteen ninety eight, of course, we
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  introduced the BCS that lasted through twenty thirteen. That was a quote two team
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  playoff, if you will, or a plus one system as they called it
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  at the time. Then in twenty fourteen we get the four team playoff that
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  lasted for just one decade. I mean, if you look at the rate
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  of growth in recent years and just the extra money to be had, again,
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  let's go back to what's the commissioner's job to generate revenue for its membership.
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  The best way to do that, the easiest way to do that right
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  now is to add on playoff games at the end of the year, because
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  we see what the media rights deals yield when you add in that inventory for
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  television, and when that happens, more money's on the table. So until
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  we hit the point of diminishing returns for no further revenue experience from adding games,
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  I do believe we're going to continue to add to the playoffs and SDS
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  is at twenty four. I think the next STEP's probably sixteen, but I
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  the seeds FBFBN at twenty four at some point and even beyond that. I
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  mean, at what point, though, do we say enough to enough or
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  at what point do we say okay, we're adding all these postseason games for
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  a limited number of teams. At what point do we cut back on the
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  regular season, Because at the end of the day, you can't ask student
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  athletes to play. I mean, right now, it could be upwards to
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  seventeen games that's an NFL season. When are we going to start saying that's
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  too many games? Maybe if they get classified as employees, that becomes part
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  of the CBA or the collective bargaining that they're going to be doing between the
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  players Union and whatever's on the other side, the NCAA or some other entity.
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  All of these questions, Jake go back to your first question of what
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  does college athletics look like, What does toushwall look like in the next three
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  to five years. These are all it's an interconnected web and they all lean
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  on each other.