24-team CFP would threaten conference title games

MIRAMAR BEACH, Fla. — Remember cotton raining down on Kyle Field in 1985? How about Dave South’s exclaiming, “He got a touchdown!” in 1998?

Texas A&M fans deliriously celebrated those football conference championships. Throughout their history, the Aggies have celebrated 16 others, too.

But future conference championship celebrations are in jeopardy… for everybody.

The Big Ten, ACC and Big 12 want to expand the 12-team playoff field to 24. The SEC favors 16 teams, which would allow for a conference championship game.

A 24-team playoff likely could cause the extinction of conference championship games after the 2031 season.

That’s when the Southeastern Conference’s contract with Mercedes-Benz Stadium to host the SEC title game expires.

Of course, contracts are made to be broken — especially in college sports. So, that may not necessarily guarantee six more seasons with conference championships games.

TexAgs

Texas A&M won its last trip to a conference championship game, beating Kansas State for the 1998 Big 12 crown.

An additional playoff round could render conference championship games obsolete. There’s not enough weekends in the autumn calendar to shoehorn in conference title games and four playoff rounds before a national championship game in mid-January.

Perhaps nobody cares. A national championship game may produce the only trophy worth winning. A chance to pursue that trophy could be all that matters.

But the SEC has about 90 million reasons to fight for a conference title game.

The SEC Championship Game produces between $80-100 million dollars. Split the difference to $90 million, and that’s roughly $5.6 million for each of the 16 SEC teams.

Texas A&M Director of Athletics Trev Alberts, speaking to reporters at the SEC Spring Meetings, wondered if the payout of eight first-round playoff games to more teams would be as lucrative.

“If you’re going to eliminate the SEC championship and what those dollars look like, and you’re going to expand the playoffs … we don’t know what those dollars look like,” Alberts said. “I’m pretty interested in what the operative revenues of Texas A&M look like in an environment where we’re sharing 22 percent of our revenues with student-athletes.

“Those are the unknowns, and those are the data points that we don’t have.”

Maybe the increased CFP revenue — which is shared by the nine FBS conferences and independents — will prove to be more lucrative for the SEC than its championship game.

Even if it is, some coaches still favor a championship game.

“It’s a heck of an opportunity to have great entertainment,” Missouri’s Eli Drinkwitz said. “It’s one of the best games that the SEC puts on every single year. I don’t know why you would get rid of that just because you want to get the next thing.”

Vanderbilt coach Clark Lea agreed.

“I, for one, love conference championship games,” Lea said. “I tell my team every time we meet that I want to play in and I want to win one of those. I enjoy that.

“I think, especially playing the league like the SEC, the idea that you can leave the field with a trophy that says SEC champion on it… That is really meaningful to me.”

A 24-team playoff apparently means more to the other conferences. That may eventually make conference championship games a memory.