Q&A: CFP executive director Rich Clark talks playoff expansion at SEC Media Days

As SEC Media Days rolls on, the College Football Playoff continues to be one of the main talking points throughout the week and has been for some time now. More specifically, playoff expansion.

The current playoff format includes 12 teams, but that could change in the future, as there has been talk about moving to 16 teams. This is relevant to South Carolina in a lot of ways since the Gamecocks were one of the teams that were on the outside looking in last season and could be in the mix to make it for the first time in program history this year.

CFP executive director Rich Clark joined 107.5 The Game’s Tyler Head and Jack Veltri on The Extra Point Tuesday morning to discuss potential playoff expansion and what it’s like being in his role.

Tyler: We were just talking about the CFP and the ongoing debate of what this is going to look like past 2025. When it comes to these meetings with the powers that be, what’s your kind of role there? And how do you see all this as it’s unfolding?

Rich Clark: “So my role in this is really to help facilitate the discussion for the conference commissioners. The 10 FBS conference commissioners and athletic director from the University of Notre Dame makes up our management committee, and they are really the ones that make these decisions about what the format is going to look like, and some of the other big ticket items and College Football Playoffs. So I see it unfolding in a very deliberate fashion, because I think they’re doing a good job. They take into account a lot of different, I’ll say, elements of the playoffs, so that they’re not making decisions that we’re going to have to change in a couple of years. So I know a lot of people want to see it happen real fast. We’re set for this coming year, though. I just want to make that clear. We know what this coming year’s format is going to be: 12 teams, straight ranking, and we’re not going to be reseeding and, of course, conference champions or anything like that. So I think it’s going to be really good.

“But the following year, there’s a couple of different options. You know, 12 teams, 14 teams, 16 teams. Do we have automatic qualifiers, or do we go with the straight ranking? And they’re wrestling with a lot of that. So I will just say we’re making progress. And you’ve probably read it, it kind of goes back and forth at times, because there’ll be some new revelation or something that will come out in the discussion, and then it, you know, it gets out there. But I’ve been a part of a lot of different decision-making processes, and this is not different than most of them. You have to go through the fire to get to that forged answer, and they’re going through the fire right now.”

Jack: How much urgency is there to expand the CFP and get to potentially, you know, like you mentioned, 14 or 16 teams?

Rich Clark: “There’s urgency because first, we have a deadline of Dec. 1, really, that is for some contractual reasons, so that we can get things moving for the next season, right? So December 1 is sort of the line that we have drawn, but the conferences have a lot of decisions that they have to make internally, and so I think, for the commissioner’s sake and for the conference’s sake, they want to get to an answer sooner than that.

“So in my mind, and this is not a hard and fast deadline, but we need to have an answer this fall, probably in the September time frame, to have determined, maybe October. But we need to have this determined so that they can make some decisions internally about how they’re going to schedule for the next season, for the ’26 season. So there is a level of urgency, but we still do have some time, and the discussions are continuing again.”

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Tyler: Would 16 teams be the limit, or is there something down the line where it could be even more than that?

Rich Clark: “So in my mind, and again, this is just me talking, given the schedule of the regular season right now, 16 is the limit. Like, we run out of weekends to play games, and there’s just no more room to have a playoff. And we don’t want to extend into February for the College Football Playoff. Our students have to go to school. Our athletes are still college students, and that matters, right? So I don’t think that we could go past 16 unless something happened with the broader college football schedule, we changed the regular season schedule, or something like that, and there’s been no talk of that. So I believe that 16 is the cap on us, and even that is bumping up right on the limit.”

Tyler: Is there any discussion of maybe changing the way the schedule is going to look going forward, to where you’re not going quite as deep into January, maybe adjusting the day the national championship game is going to be on, or anything along those lines?

Rich Clark: “We haven’t discussed that directly. I’ve heard it bantered around, but we have not had that discussion. And one of the reasons is because there is a very deliberate decision to have some time between the end of the regular season and the beginning of the playoffs, just to give teams a little bit of recovery time, let them get their legs back up under them, injuries, you know, heal, things like that. There is a possibility that we could eat into that, but it’s not really a desired outcome we want to give the teams that week-plus in between the end of the season and the beginning.

“Jan. 20 is about where we ended last year. That’s about as late as we want to go, though. That’s pretty late into the end of the year. We don’t want to go any further past that. Honestly, if there were ways that we could walk it back, we would. But then we talk about expanding to 16. So that goes right out the window, right? So we’re sort of at our limits, and we’re going to do as best we can to get those games in if we do expand, but we don’t have a lot more room to move the schedule.”

Jack: How do you guys kind of balance what these different conferences want? Last week, Big 12 Commissioner Brett Yormark spoke publicly about being in favor of the 5+11 future CFP format. Then you have other conferences like the SEC, which are in favor of that as well, and the Big 10 is in favor of the 4-4-2-2-1 model. So, do you try to come to a compromise with these conferences, or how do you kind of deal with that?

Rich Clark: “Yeah, that’s a great question. So the thing that people have to realize is that each of the commissioners, their job is to support their conference. That is what they get hired to do. That is the expectation of them. And if they don’t do that, they’re not doing their job. They’re not fulfilling their commitment. So they come into the room with what’s best for their conference, but then they have to talk about it with respect and keep in mind what’s good for all of college football, and that takes a lot of give and take, a lot of discussion that they have. Sometimes they’re really hard discussions. But these are all professionals. They’re all highly capable people.

“I will not say that it’s easy for them, because it’s not, but it’s like you said, there’s a bit of give and take. There’s sometimes a little bit of compromise here and there, but in the end, they will come to a good answer on this. And I liken it to Congress. You talk about a congressional member, if they’re in the House of Representatives, they’re representing their district, if they’re a senator, they’re representing their state, they know what their constituents want. They come into Congress and they talk about it and work through it, but they’ve got to do what’s right for the country too, and for the greater good. So it takes a lot of compromise, reaching across the aisle, and that’s what these commissioners have to do. They’ve got to reach across the aisle all the time, work with people that they’re going to be competing against, and really come to good answers for the greater good.”

Tyler: I know they’re behind closed doors, but do those conversations get heated?

Rich Clark: “I don’t really want to get into how heated they get, but I will just say sometimes I walk out of there, my eyebrows are gone. No, I’m just kidding. I mean, they do. They’re intense, right? They’re intense conversations. But again, they are professionals, and they’re going to treat each other with dignity and respect in the room. But they’re not easy conversations, and so they’re going to put it on the table, they’re going to be honest with each other, then they’re going to walk out and shake hands and keep being great colleagues. So it’s interesting.”

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