Report: Washington State, Pac-2 proposal leads to delay on College Football Playoff format change

One of the biggest changes that college football fans have been clamoring for decades is expanding the College Football Playoff format from four teams to 12 teams. The good news is fans will finally get to see the CFP with 12 teams in 2024 and 2025. But beyond 2025, it’s future could potentially be up in the air.

The latest thing that’s holding up the format change — which needs a unanimous vote — is a proposal from Washington State president Kirk Schulz asking for guarantees of voting rights/revenue distribution for the Pac-12/Pac-2 (Washington State and Oregon State) beyond 2025, according to Ross Dellenger of Yahoo Sports.

Around a month ago, the leaders of the College Football Playoff came together in Houston, Texas before the national championship game expecting to adopt the change in format to the 12-team playoff.

Dellenger explained why the delay in a vote has swirled even more uncertainty around the CFP after 2025.

“The latest delay casts more doubt on the future of the playoff beyond 2025, the final year that the 10 FBS conferences and Notre Dame are contractually bonded together through the CFP’s television deal with media partner ESPN. Though the CFP is in the midst of negotiations with ESPN to extend the deal, there is currently no contractually bound playoff starting in 2026,” Dellenger wrote in his column for Yahoo Sports.

In their interview with Yahoo Sports last week, SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey and Big Ten Commissioner Tony Petitti expressed doubts on their commitment to the future of the College Football Playoff if the leaders can’t correct several issues. Greg Sankey was asked if he was committed to the CFP after 2025 and he said, “Yep, but we’ve got a lot to get right. The commitment is we want to get this right.”

The news comes on the heels of an announcement on Friday that the SEC and Big Ten were forming a joint advisory board to study the future of college athletics.

The College Football Playoff Management Committee is currently made up of commissioners from the 10 conferences across college football. That committee, plus Notre Dame AD Jack Swarbick are currently scheduled to meet on Monday and Tuesday in Dallas, Texas. Those two days are expected to be full of key decisions over the College Football Playoff’s long-term future.

In 2022, the College Football Playoff Board of Managers approved an expansion format that gives automatic spots to the six highest-ranked conference champions and at-large spots to the next six highest-ranked teams.