The craziness that has dominated college football for the past five years continues to trudge onward.
As reports surface that the 10 FBS conference commissioners plus Notre Dame athletic director Pete Bevacqua that comprise the College Football Playoff Management Committee are strongly considering expanding the sport’s postseason yet again, fans are left wondering how exactly any of this is making the college football season more enjoyable.
The new format the committee is leaning toward, reportedly spearheaded by Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti, calls for a 16-team playoff with four automatic berths for the Big Ten and SEC, two auto-bids a piece for the ACC and Big 12, one slot for a Group of 5 school, and three additional at-large selections.
Despite this format including an even 16 teams, it wouldn’t use a symmetrical bracket. The bottom four teams would compete in what is essentially a “play-in” round, while the top two teams receive double byes, because the format wasn’t convoluted enough with 13 playoff slots already accounted for.
That right there is the crux of the issue. 13 out of 16 playoff slots under this format are preordained. Expanding the playoff in this manner threatens to devalue the regular season to a point where games that traditionally had massive postseason implications no longer carry that weight.
And one network stands to be hurt the most if these changes come to fruition: Fox.
Fox, of course, is the lead broadcast partner for the Big Ten, airing the conference’s top games throughout the regular season in its Big Noon Kickoff slot. After the regular season, however, Fox’s college football schedule, for all intents and purposes, is over. ESPN’s, on the other hand, is just getting started.
ESPN owns exclusive rights to the College Football Playoff through 2032 and that won’t change under an expanded format, much to the chagrin of some Fox Sports commentators. The network does license a pair of first round games to TNT, but other than that, ESPN has the entirety of the college football postseason to itself.
So far, that’s been fine for Fox. In fact, during last season, the first of the new 12-team format, it was actually easy to see how expansion benefited regular season inventory. More teams were fighting for playoff spots, and conference championships still mattered as a means of securing a first-round bye and an automatic bid. That will no longer be the case under the new “straight-seeding” model this season that eliminates the conference champion requirement for first-round byes. Last year, no matter if teams were playoff locks or on the bubble, each game still held significant importance.
Under the proposed 16-team model, that will go out the window. Teams safely in the playoff bracket won’t be playing for much more than seeding. Conference championship games will lose their meaning. And instead of the most important games on the calendar involving the nation’s top teams, they’ll now involve middle-of-the-pack Big Ten and SEC teams fighting for their conference’s fourth automatic bid.
For Fox, this means its most important game inventory year-in and year-out, namely the Big Ten title game, which it airs every other year, and Ohio State-Michigan, which it airs every year, will be significantly less meaningful under the new format.
Sure, Ohio State-Michigan will still be the most-watched regular season game most years. But it’s difficult to imagine as many viewers will tune in when The Game isn’t literally do-or-die, like it has been for much of its history.
And the Big Ten Championship Game? It might determine whether or not one team gets a playoff bye, but aside from pride, the game just won’t have stakes that are very high.
The one saving grace for Fox is that Petitti, a former television executive, has a plan for that. Under his proposed format, the Big Ten commissioner would push for teams No. 3 through No. 6 in the conference standings to compete against each other on conference championship weekend, with the winners earning the Big Ten’s third and fourth automatic playoff bids. Fox would happily oblige, but would that added inventory make up for the degeneration of the rest of the regular season? Ultimately, viewers will vote with their remotes.
A couple Big Ten play-in games probably won’t make up for the fact that Fox, a network that prides itself on being a big player in college football, will be iced out from the sport’s most important inventory through 2032, and worse, have its existing inventory devalued as its primary competitor, ESPN, is propped up.
That’s a combination that has to sting.
For many years, Fox has been a go-to destination for high-octane college football games. And as a Big Ten partner, the network will still have its fair share of marquee matchups. It’s just that those matchups won’t mean as much when two and three-loss teams still qualify for an automatic bid. And even if they don’t, there’s still three at-large spots up for grabs where a Big Ten strength of schedule can serve as a safety net.
Even if these changes go through, college football will be fine. Fox will also be fine. Viewers are still going to tune in on Saturdays to watch their school, and likely the name brand schools in the Big Ten that fill out Fox’s schedule. But they won’t tune in with the same level of intensity that they’re used to from a marquee Big Ten game. And Gus Johnson’s voice might hit just a bit different knowing that, whichever team loses, there will still be a path for them to get into the playoff.
Some of the big game magic Fox is known for will be lost, and that’s just reality.