The college football playoffs announced Thursday that they will expand to a 12-team event starting in 2024, completing an 18-month process riddled with delays and disagreements.
The announcement was made the next day The Rose Bowl agreed I had to amend my contract for the 2024 and 2025 seasons. This was the last hurdle CFP officials had to clear to triple the size of his current four-team format.
“I never gave up,” said CFP Executive Director Bill Hancock.
2024 playoff first round Takes place at campus sites matching 5-12 seeded teams The week ending Saturday, December 21st. An exact date has not yet been determined.
The quarter-finals and semi-finals will be played in the bowls that are rotating as the semi-final hosts in the current format: Rose, Sugar, Orange, Peach, Cotton and Fiesta.
“I want to reiterate that every bowl, all six stepped up,” Hancock said. “And it’s no secret that it extended into the final minutes of the fourth quarter. There is no doubt that we continued, but we are here to celebrate the fact that an agreement has been reached.”
The 2024 season championship games will take place in Atlanta on January 20, 2025. Next year’s title fight will take place on January 19, 2026 at Miami Gardens, Florida. Both times he is over a week behind current title game timings.
The expansion is expected to add approximately $450 million in gross revenue to participating conferences and schools. His 12-year contract with ESPN for his college football playoffs runs through the 2025-26 season.
Plans to expand the playoffs were announced in June 2021, but the conference commissioners who govern the CFP were unable to reach the unanimous consensus needed to move the proposal forward. The 2024 season expansion was declared fully finished in February.
The college presidents and presidents overseeing the CFP stepped in and revived the process over the summer. They approved his original plan to use it by 2026, and he returned it to the commissioner to try expansion by 2024, if possible.
The Commissioner no longer has to fight over formats, but must consider when and where the games will be played, and whether bowl partners and championship game host cities can accommodate schedule changes for 2024 and 2025. was.
The 120-year-old bowl game organizers hoped to get assurances from the CFP that they would preserve precious New Year’s Day time when the new deal went into effect in 2026, so the Rose Bowl issue would be the last. resolved to
CFP officials hesitatedPainted as a saboteur and faced with the prospect of being barred from the long-term stretched playoffs, the Rose Bowl agreed to move forward in good faith.
“It is our intention to have the Rose Bowl game on January 1,” said Laura Farber, chair of the Rose Bowl Board of Trustees. “But we are flexible with our schedules as needed.”
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