Pac-12 commissioner George Kliavkoff on how to save playoff expansion

Despite optimism in recent months about College Football Playoff expansion, talks have stalled off with no solution in sight. The lack of progress on expansion talks has been frustrating for many, including Pac-12 commissioner George Kliavkoff.

At this point, the biggest issue is that the commissioners cannot come together and compromise on a single solution. Kliavkoff believes that a little bit of collaboration is all that they need to get the ball rolling on expansion of the playoff.

“Well I think the focus has to be on beyond Year 12, and where you can have not a unanimous vote, but you can have a vote of enough of the conferences that you would need,” Kliavkoff said on how to save expansion. “And then other conferences can decided whether or not to join. My guess is that if the right group of conferences agree on what the future format should look like, all of the other conferences will decide to participate.

“I don’t know whether we’re going to be on the inside or outside of that. Whether the format that we kind of prefer is going to be the one decided or not. But we’re going to be very collaborative about working through those issues. My strong hope is that after we figure that out for Year 13 and beyond, that it’ll be kind of a layup to agree on the fact that we should start it sooner than 13. But I’m less optimistic about that today than I was several months ago.”

Kliavkoff frustrated with how expansion talks ‘misled’ fans

When optimism began rising about possible expansion of the playoff, it was premature. To Kliavkoff, the optimism led to fans being “misled” about the prospects of playoff expansion. Talks were not close to being done, and Kliavkoff is frustrated with how that was handled.

“The fans were misled,” Kliavkoff told Paul Finebaum. “They were basically shown a format in June, that did not have the approval of all the people that needed to approve it.” He called this a mistake that fans and media alike took to heart and ran with it. There was never any validity to it.

“I hope we don’t ever do that again. It’s a self inflicted wound. I just don’t think that’s the way we should be doing business.”

Kliavkoff is pretty new in his role as the Pac-12 commissioner. He began that role on July 1, 2021. Just months into his role, Kliavkoff is already fighting an important battle for the future of college football.