A panel full of media execs threw cold water on the idea of expanding the CFP yesterday during a panel at the '16 Learfield Intercollegiate Athletics Forum. Just days removed from the annual CFP selection, five sports media veterans debated the merits of a bigger tournament and the status of conference championship games in the light of Penn State’s exclusion from the playoff. All defended the status quo. "In some sense it’s a zero sum game or close to it,” said Fox Sports Exec VP/Research, League Operations & Strategy Mike Mulvihill. “And you can’t add emphasis to the postseason, or add teams, without to some extent risking damaging the regular season. I think we’re at a nice balance.” He did joke that Fox would still want the extra games if the CFP did expand. Illustrating that point, ESPN VP/College Sports Programming Ilan Ben-Hanan pointed to the Ohio State-Michigan regular-season finale, which this year served as an elimination game for the CFP. Both teams would have comfortably qualified for an expanded eight-team playoff. Lower viewership for games like that might be the downside of an additional, highly rated playoff game. “I don’t think we want to sacrifice 13 or 14 weeks of relevance for one extra game,” Ben-Hanan said. “There’s a law of diminishing returns.” Pac-12 Networks President Lydia Murphy-Stephans raised the specter of “unintended consequences,” noting that it can be difficult to predict how an eight-team field might affect fan interest and ratings in earlier games.
LEFT OUT IN THE COLD: CBS Sports Exec VP/Programming Dan Weinberg preached the big picture and said complaints from teams not chosen will never go away, even with a bigger field. “It’s only four or five days removed from that decision, and there’s always someone on the outside looking in,” Weinberg said. "I don’t think that problem or viewpoint goes away.” At the same time, the panel rejected moderator John Ourand’s suggestion that the NCAA men's basketball tournament represents the logical conclusion of their theory: A large, inclusive tournament renders the regular season uninteresting. Learfield Senior VP/Digital Media Scott Carlis said the "relevancy of the regular season is still at an extraordinarily high level” because of how sophisticated the NCAA selection committee has become in looking at early-season upsets. The panel noted that a volume-heavy schedule of lower-rated college basketball regular-season games serves an important, albeit different purpose, from football’s mega-events.
WATCHING THE CLOCK: Panelists generally felt that college football does not need to shorten its games, even as pro leagues such as MLB and the NFL carefully evaluate options to speed up games. College football games now routinely blow through 3.5-hour programming blocks. “Close and late,” said Weinberg. “We always root for a close game, decided late. And if that runs three to four hours, it’s still compelling, and that’s OK.”
