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SEC Sports
CFP shelves talk of changes to 12-team format
The College Football Playoff 12-team format will stay as is, with talk of changes being shelved for now while the situation with the Pac-12 plays out.
ROSEMONT, Ill. -- The College Football Playoff management committee shelved any talk of format changes to the expanded 12-team field that will begin next season, opting instead to continue to wait to see what the future of the gutted Pac-12 will look like, CFP executive director Bill Hancock said Wednesday.
Following another summer of sweeping conference realignment, only Washington State and Oregon State will be left to determine the future of the Pac-12 in 2024 and beyond. The NCAA gives conferences a two-year grace period when they no longer meet membership requirements before changes are needed, but the notion of a two-team league competing in the CFP has its decision-makers in a holding pattern on the future format.
Hancock, who has spent five decades in college athletics, called it "the most unthinkable" scenario.
"One thing that happened that I never would've dreamed would ever happen, happened," Hancock said. "... It's totally weird and everybody knows it."
Hancock also said that just because there's never been a two-team conference "doesn't mean there can't be." He wouldn't speculate on whether the CFP would still recognize the winner of a two-team league.
Pac-12 commissioner George Kliavkoff, who attended the meetings but didn't speak to reporters, participated in votes "on everything relevant to this season," Hancock said. There's still a possibility the Mountain West schools merge with the Pac-12 to try to benefit from its brand and possible assets, but that opens the controversial and subjective question of whether the Pac-12 would still be considered a Power 5 conference, which gets the benefit of 80% of the CFP revenue. The Group of 5 schools receive 20%.
According to the NCAA bylaws, an FBS conference needs at least eight full FBS members that satisfy all bowl subdivision requirements. A conference's status as an autonomy conference is determined by the Division I board of directors.
