Staples: The Big Ten benefits from halting College Football Playoff expansion talks. The ACC, Pac-12 absolutely do not

When someone acts against their own best interests, the conspiracy theories start to flow. And perhaps I spent far too much time thinking about the Big Ten’s upcoming television deals while writing this column Thursday, but those TV deals were the first thing that came to mind Friday when the news broke that the 10 FBS conference commissioners and Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick had finally given up on the idea of expanding the College Football Playoff before the CFP’s first media rights deal ends following the 2025 season.

The Athletic confirmed Sports Illustrated’s report that the ACC, the Big Ten and the Pac-12 were the leagues that previously voted against adopting a 12-team model before the current rights deal expired. I’m about to explain how that might benefit the Big Ten, but it absolutely doesn’t benefit the ACC or the Pac-12. It could be neutral or bad for the ACC, but it’s a disaster for the Pac-12, whose commissioner oddly tweeted his disappointment Friday that the thing his league voted against didn’t happen.

I share the disappointment felt by many college football fans today. I look forward to working collaboratively with other Commissioners to deliver a football playoff format that is more inclusive and balanced.

— George Kliavkoff (@Kliavkoff) February 18, 2022

The Big Ten doesn’t need an expanded CFP to be part of college football’s ruling class, but the Big Ten also could benefit from an expanded CFP. Still, the Big Ten will benefit even more from the monster media rights deals it is about to negotiate that will go into effect in 2023. The SEC did Big Ten commissioner Kevin Warren and his team a favor by agreeing to terms early with ESPN, clearing the board of other premium regular-season games. And now the ACC, Big Ten and Pac-12 have cleared the board of eight extra-premium postseason games that likely will fetch massive prices from networks.

So Disney, which owns the CFP’s media rights and would get the first crack at buying any new version, suddenly has more money to spend for 2023-25.

A new opening round could have theoretically been sold to another entity if Disney balked, and Fox, CBS and NBC, all want to maintain or expand their college football presence. Now those networks have only one way to buy premium games before 2026: They have to overpay the Big Ten.

The Big Ten was going to make massive money on those deals no matter the outcome of the CFP negotiations, but this delay only gives the league more leverage. That makes sense. That looks like a league protecting its interests. The Big Ten had good reason to vote no.

The resistance from the ACC and the Pac-12 make far less sense.

Perhaps it’s as simple as the ACC, Big Ten and Pac-12 sticking together as “The Alliance”, the group they formed last summer in response to the news that the SEC was taking Oklahoma and Texas from the Big 12. When that group formed, we joked that it served no real purpose other than to allow the leaders of those leagues to pretend they were doing something to stop the mean old SEC from taking over the sport.

But there seemed to be a few kernels of practical benefit, including potential football scheduling cooperation that could have created some fun matchups. In December, Pac-12 commissioner George Kliavkoff said his league was prepared to drop from nine to eight conference games immediately if the Big Ten would do the same in order to create some exciting nonconference games without the industry-standard 10-year lag.

This week, Ohio State athletic director Gene Smith seemed to puncture that balloon when he said the Big Ten’s athletic directors would prefer to stay at nine conference games. But perhaps The Alliance was just acting as a CFP voting bloc. If that’s the case, it served its purpose. But that solidarity didn’t actually help two of its members. In fact, it probably will wind up hurting them.

ACC commissioner Jim Phillips has said that his league would like to see the governance of college football settled upon before settling upon a new CFB format. He also has said this is a player safety issue, an argument few believe because we’ve seen these people make decisions for decades without worrying about the welfare or basic economic rights of the players.

Phillips also has said that his league’s albatross of a TV contract — an exclusive deal with Disney that runs through June 2036 — and the desire to get Notre Dame to join as a full member and re-work that deal have nothing to do with the league’s intransigence here. If the 12-team format passed as constructed, Notre Dame would have had zero incentive to join a conference in football in the future.

The Pac-12’s Kliavkoff, meanwhile, has said all of the commissioners — not just the four who made up the working group that developed the four-team proposal — should have a hand in creating the new system. Kliavkoff also needs to satisfy the Rose Bowl, which is just another football game to people outside his league and the Big Ten but has a Svengali hold on those within those leagues.

Of these three, the Big Ten will be fine. It will make a fortune off its new deals. It will place teams in the four-team CFP regularly.

The ACC and the Pac-12? They think they’re stalling, but they’re actually gambling. The world of late 2024 (when the new CFP deal must be done) and the world of 2026 (when that deal will begin) could look quite different. And those leagues may find themselves in an even less advantageous position than they do now. They spent much of the past few month arguing that their champions deserved guaranteed spots in the CFP. In a few years, they may have even less compelling cases for any kind of special treatment.

Should we take the ACC and the Pac-12’s reasons for their no votes at face value? Because they certainly don’t make sense. The ACC needs more money to distribute. Its schools are stuck in a TV deal that will remain the same while all the other leagues take advantage of a more competitive media marketplace. More years of an expanded Playoff meant more money for those other leagues as well, but it would have spent all the same for the ACC schools. Instead, the ACC left money on the table despite there being no upside for the ACC in leaving it there.

The Pac-12, which hasn’t put a team in the Playoff since the 2016 season, needed expansion to give its fanbases hope that one of its teams might actually compete for a national title. Perhaps Lincoln Riley will restore USC to prominence. Maybe Dan Lanning will cash in a deep roster that Mario Cristobal left behind at Oregon. But if the league continues to produce more of the same, then it might be sitting on a 10-season CFP drought by the time the new format begins.

More important, the Pac-12 must negotiate new TV deals that will start in 2024. While expansion still enjoys support, comments from the SEC’s Greg Sankey on Friday suggest it isn’t guaranteed anymore. A Pac-12 that is virtually guaranteed (or absolutely guaranteed) a spot in the CFP is a much more desirable TV property from a national standpoint. If the league is going to keep getting shut out forever? Why would people outside the fanbases care to watch?

Sankey was one of the four working group members who designed the 12-team proposal. He has warned recently that the SEC might withdraw its support for an expanded format if this wasn’t accepted. Sankey felt the format he, Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby, Mountain West commissioner Craig Thompson and Swarbrick designed would help everyone. The Group of 5 leagues, the Big 12 and the Pac-12 would have spots guaranteed for highly-ranked conference champs. The ACC would get extra revenue. The Big Ten and the SEC would benefit from more at-large spots.

On Friday, Sankey basically said the SEC might just be fine remaining at four forever because the SEC has dominated with that format. This might be saber-rattling ahead of 2024. It might just be frustration, an empty threat by the SEC to take its ball and go home. At the end of the day, a 12-team CFP still benefits the SEC more than a four-team CFP does. The league could get three or four teams in some years, and the variation among the above-average programs means much of the league could make the CFP over time.

But Sankey’s league will be in a different tier than those other leagues by the time the CFP negotiations begin again. Its new deal with Disney will be kicking in far more money. If Oklahoma and Texas haven’t already found a way out of the Big 12 early, they’ll be about to join in 2025. The SEC’s only peer at that point will be the Big Ten, which when CFP negotiations return in earnest will be in the second year of record-breaking deals that will make its athletic departments the envy of the nation.

At that point, what will the Big Ten need the ACC and Pac-12 for? Why would either the Big Ten or SEC care what the ACC or Pac-12 need or want? If the latter two have been further weakened either financially or in football prestige, why should we assume they’ll have any say in how the new system is structured? Perhaps the Big Ten and SEC — the only two leagues you must have to create a viable playoff system — will create a system that benefits the Big Ten and SEC and relegate the others to the same kids table the Group of 5 leagues currently occupy.

That’s why the Big 12’s Bowlsby, who should be madder at Sankey and the SEC than anyone, pushed hard for the expanded system to pass even when he had every reason to try to spite Sankey. It was the best possible outcome for his league. That’s why the American Athletic Conference’s Mike Aresco, whose league was the first from the Group of 5 to put a team in the four-team CFP, penned an open letter this week imploring his colleagues to go ahead with the expansion.

The Big 12 and the American continue to act in the best interests of their members. Notre Dame supported what would help Notre Dame the most. Ditto for the SEC, Conference USA, the MAC, the Mountain West and the Sun Belt. So has the Big Ten, even if what works for that league goes against the wishes of most of the others.

The ACC and the Pac-12 didn’t act in their members’ best interests.

Instead, they gambled on a less certain future. Their leaders will just have to hope they guessed correctly.

(Photo: Brian Spurlock / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)