Big Ten wants to expand College Football to 24 or 28 teams: report

Not content with college football’s current 12-team playoff model, the Big Ten wants to expand the postseason, by much more than has been talked about in the past.

Leaders in the Big Ten are considering an idea to expand the College Football Playoff to 24 or 28 teams in the future, according to a report from ESPN’s Pete Thamel.

What is the Big Ten thinking?

The proposal would include the complete elimination of conference championship games at the end of the regular season and entail creating more automatic bids for the Power Four conferences, according to the current reporting.

That plan would include an estimated seven automatic places reserves for the Big Ten and SEC each, while awarding five berths to ACC and Big 12 teams each.

From there, the playoff would hand out two places for non-Power Four conferences and two remaining at-large positions for other playoff-worthy teams.

Under a proposed 28-team format, an estimated 20 College Football Playoff games would be played directly on campus, building dramatically off the idea of on-campus games that was introduced last postseason in the first-ever 12-team field.

In the early stages

Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti mentioned the expansion proposal to his conference during private remarks on Wednesday, according to the report, and the idea has been shared around by others in the league.

The proposal remains “just an idea at his point,” according to Thamel, and it’s unlikely that the Big Ten’s counterparts in other conferences would entertain it at this point, given the current environment.

SEC, Big Ten disagree on future expansion plans

There is already some distance between the Big Ten on the one side and the SEC and other conferences on the other, as the Big Ten remains committed to the idea of granting four automatic bids to itself and the SEC in the event of an expansion of the College Football Playoff.

For much of the offseason, it appeared the SEC and Big Ten were on the same page as to how the future playoff should be structured.

Until recently, the two conferences agreed that they should be awarded four automatic qualifiers each, while giving the ACC and Big 12 two each.

But then the SEC appeared to back out of that view after it received some backlash, namely from the ACC and Big 12, which denounced that plan as unfair.

That left the Big Ten alone in supporting the four automatic qualifier proposal, a stance it’s unlikely to budge from unless the SEC adds a ninth conference game to its football schedule, up from the current eight-game league slate it plays.

The feeling from the Big Ten is that the SEC will artificially improve its win-loss numbers come playoff selection time by playing a perceived pushover opponent late in the season, known informally among fans as “Cupcake Week” in late November, while Big Ten teams play league opponents.

That would seem to put any College Football Playoff expansion plans on ice for the foreseeable future, but in the meantime, the Big Ten appears to be getting more aggressive.

(ESPN)

--