Can Big Ten expansion influence a new 16-team CFB Playoff? Conference realignment's impact on college football playoffs, explored
There has been a lot of Big Ten expansion talk as of late, and that move could change the landscape of college football. With the College Football Palyoff expanding to 12 teams beginning in the 2024 season, this could continue to grow.
A group of Big Ten presidents have begun exploring expansion to 18 or even 20 teams, per @DanWetzel.
The schools being considered:
• Oregon
• Washington
• Cal
• Stanford pic.twitter.com/MZ1ILk838e
With the UCLA Bruins and USC Trojans joining from the Pac-12 in 2024, will the mindset of the Big Ten be to continue to expand its influence on what college football does with the postseason?
Should the Big Ten expansion change the College Football Playoff plans?
The Big Ten expansion should not change the CFP plans. In theory, the committee in charge of College Football Playoff should understand what the future of the sport is. It is already expanding from four to 12 teams, and it could easily go to 16 teams and that is without any conference's changes.
The Big Ten expansion is something that should not influence the College Football Playoff in any way. The biggest issue is that the number of programs in college football does not change. Structuring of the CFP can change as a result, in terms of having byes and limiting a certain amount of teams in a single conference, is the biggest effect.
What teams should join the Big Ten?
The Pac-12's issues with its media rights deal is a big reason why the four teams rumored to join the Big Ten are from the Pac-12. If the league wants to add four teams, two of them have should be from the Front Office Sports tweet above.
The two programs from that tweet should be the Oregon Ducks and the Stanford Cardinal. The Ducks should be added to increase the quality of teams throughout the conference while the Cardinal add the prestige of a school and solid in other sports.
The other two programs should be from the Atlantic Coast Conference as the Florida State Seminoles and Clemson Tigers can be impactful. This would make the league to the point they would be competitive with the Southeastern Conference in terms of quality and quantity.
These four teams being added also adds teams from multiple sections of the United States to grow the Big Ten. It will be difficult to explain adding four Pac-12 teams as there is not as much value simply going west outside of travel being easier for USC and UCLA.
What programs would you want to see as part of the Big Ten expansion?