Not only did George Kliavkoff not foresee the Big Ten, a fellow Alliance member, poaching Pac-12 members, the first-year commissioner was “convinced” his conference was in line to receive a larger percentage share of revenue once the College Football Playoff eventually expands. Now, not only is that belief of Kliavkoff’s also incorrect, but the Pac-12′s future is in jeopardy.
Earlier this month, Kliavkoff told The Oregonian/OregonLive that his voting against CFP expansion this spring was because of his desire for the Pac-12 champion to receive an automatic playoff berth — a position the Big Ten and ACC also held for their league champions — and because details of the revenue sharing in the proposed 12-team field were not fully determined.
“Today the revenue is split up between what today is the Power 5 and the Group of 5 and then within each of those groups there’s a revenue split agreement, which is not public and I’m not going to share, but there’s an existing agreement,” Kliavkoff said on June 6. “I want to know how that money is going to be split up irrespective of how much money there is to split up before I sign up for another long contract. I can’t imagine anyone thinking that that’s irrational. I don’t know anyone that would sign a contract for a multiple-year deal without knowing what percentage of the revenue they are entitled to.”
The 10 FBS conferences and Notre Dame each earn shares of revenue under the current CFP, which is under contract through the 2025 season. Teams that earn a spot in the four-team field and those that win earn portions of revenue for their leagues before that split occurs.
“I’d actually be in favor of increasing the amount that we take off of the top and give to the successful conferences and teams,” Kliavkoff said. “I’m much more concerned about the large portion that’s left after you take off of the top and how that’s split.
“I’m not worried that it would be lesser; I’m convinced on a percentage basis it won’t be lesser. I want to know how much more it’s going to be.”
SEC commissioner Greg Sankey, one of four members of the committee that devise the 12-team proposal that was voted down, has been against automatic bids to the Power 5 conference champions whether the expanded CFP is eight or 12 teams.
“In an eight team playoff with six AQs, when you’re replacing the eighth best team with the 20th best team, which would’ve happened after the ‘24 season, I don’t think that playoff is sustainable,” Sankey said. “That’s really not about protecting our interests; that’s just saying from a college football standpoint if you’re going to put No. 20 in and leave No. 8 home and you’re going to do that over and over, that just never seemed to work for me.
“So when we went to 12 and you accommodate the automatic bids opportunities without guaranteeing those by conference, they all stand up and say I expect that we’ll be at least in the top six conference champions every year. I’m not running from that. I think others are concerned they won’t be in that so they want protection. I think replacing 12 with 20, at least you can understand that; 16 to 12, that’ll be tough when it happens. I never thought that you could replace the eighth-best team with the 20th best team and that be accepted as the right kind of playoff format.”
Sankey reiterated he’d be open to an eight-team CFP with no automatic qualifiers and noted that an SEC-only postseason format is still “in a folder,” though nobody believes it’ll ever come to pass.
“We weren’t the one seeking to move from four early,” Sankey said. “We understood a 12-year deal, four-team layoff. We’re not in any different position than we would have thought in 2017. The bulk, the vast majority of either the commissioner level of CFP board of managers meetings, president level, were saying we have to expand and we have to do it early.
“If you’re the one not saying that and there were one or two other individuals, but from a conference standpoint we were very clear on a consistent basis, then you want to be part of the solution and you want to try to consider all issues, all perspectives and see if you can find a way to make that work, which I thought 12 did. It doesn’t mean it was perfect but it certainly met a lot of needs and whether or not this comes back and how this next cycle of conversation is approached, debated and decided remains to be seen. We’re back to square one it seems.”
The Pac-12 led the charge to have conferences be allowed to have their championship games match their top two teams based on win percentage in league play, rather than division champions. The Pac-12 is making the move this season, though its divisional schedules remain, and the ACC and Mountain West are changing their conference title game formats as well.
It could’ve helped mitigate concerns about automatic bids, as the likelihood of an upset by a team by an otherwise undeserving team goes down compared to division champions.
But that could all be moot to the Pac-12, which is facing an existential crisis with Kliavkoff about to begin his second year as commissioner on Friday.
