This week is crucial College Football Playoff Expansion the talks.
The CFP’s exclusive 30-day negotiating window with ESPN is scheduled to end Friday. Could this mean we make a decision to move to a 24-team playoff? Maybe. But we’ll just have to see how it all plays out.
More likely, though not certain, the CFP will open up to bidders beyond ESPN as it looks to make the finances work to expand beyond the current 12-team format, which was expanded from a four-team playoff starting in the 2024 season. And as with any postseason expansion, the ripple effects could be plentiful.
Stay tuned.
Navy leads the all-time series against Army with a record of 65-55-7. (Photo by David Jensen/Getty Images)
Expanding the College Football Playoff might make sense on paper — but a group of stakeholders is working through the increasingly complicated scheduling conundrum it could present.
Sources briefed on the discussions told me the Army-Navy game would likely be moved to the first week of December — a weekend currently occupied by conference title games — if the College Football Playoff expands to 24 teams.
The move is likely to provide a protected television window for the competition, which would fall in line with an executive order issued by President Donald Trump in March. The order stipulated “no college football game, particularly the college football CFP or other postseason games, shall be televised in a manner that directly conflicts with the Army-Navy game.”
Moving the game to the regular season, sources said, is a non-starter, despite talk in recent months that Thanksgiving weekend could be an option.
“You’ve seen at the highest levels, people appreciate the game, what our institutions stand for, what they produce,” Army athletics director Tom Theodorakis told me. “What I appreciate is, as people are talking about these scenarios, they continue to value and value America’s game, and that they want to preserve and want to put on the biggest stage possible, while also providing the opportunity that when our institutions compete for conference championships and have the opportunity to be in the College Football Playoff, we have the opportunity to do that.”
Army QB Cale Hellums has thrown for 337 yards, three touchdowns and one interception this season. (Photo by Edward Diller/Getty Images)
To understand the timetable it would take to switch the Army-Navy game if the CFP expands, we need to back up a bit.
The move to 24 teams would almost certainly mean the elimination of conference championship games — a slate of contests that, across the Power Four, is believed to bring in about $200-250 million a year. The first round matches are expected to be moved to the second week of December, compared to their current slot in the third week of the month.
Sources said the most likely scenario in that case would be Army-Navy entering the weekend previously occupied by conference title games in the first week of December.
That weekend would allow an independent window for the game — a crucial point for discussion, given its importance to viewership, sponsorship dollars and other financial factors.
Army-Navy has averaged more than 7 million viewers a year since 2014 and has earned at least 7.5 million viewers in seven of the last 10 years. It also surpassed 8 million viewers three times in that period (2017, 2018 and 2024), while the 2024 contest brought in a modern record of 9.4 million viewers.
The schedule, however, presents its own challenges if Army or Navy are in the mix for a College Football Playoff bid.
Current CFP policy states that play is not included in selections, as they occur after they have been made. Those involved in the talks suggest that keeping the policy in place would make sense even if the field were expanded to 24 teams, although that leaves the door open for surprises.
Consider, for a moment, that Army is in line to advance to the CFP in an expanded Group of Six format. What happens if it gets blasted by a Marine squad? How should this be factored? This is less clear.
“We just continue to ask that Army-Navy remain in an exclusive broadcast window and hopefully that’s also positioned in such a way that Navy would have the ability to compete in the CFP if warranted,” Navy athletics director Michael Kelly told me. “There seems to be support from both sides of the government and the White House for that, and I’m not grateful for this committee that I’m not grateful for. Think carefully about the format for the college football postseason.”
It is also not certain that each Group of Six conference would clinch the conference championship game. For example, American — whose members include Army and Navy — could cut a week and move the title game to the last week of November if it wants to hold the contest.
However, all signs point to the Army-Navy maintaining its window if the CFP is extended — even if the date changes.
Best deal I saw this week
Wake Forest is moving its multimedia rights from Learfield to Playfly. (Photo by Cory Knowlton/ISI Photos/ISI Photos via Getty Images)
Wake Forest announced that it is moving its multimedia rights from Learfield to Playfly — a sports marketing company that also recently partnered with the NCAA.
The move is significant in the college sports business world as the school was the first client of ISP Sports — the spiritual predecessor of IMG College and what is now Learfield — in 1992.
ISP Sports founder Ben Sutton also remains committed to the school as a major benefactor of the Demon Deacons and has been closely involved in helping the school enter the new world of college sports. Playfly now counts Appalachian State and East Carolina among its North Carolina-based properties, while its most extensive college portfolio is up to 32.
Best quote I saw this week
It’s no secret that there’s some, shall we say, unrest in Arkansas these days.
That said, megabooster John Tyson had jokes Monday while speaking to the Little Rock Touchdown Club. Asked about the impact Texas Tech’s Cody Campbell has had on the program, Tyson said, “He’s got oil, I’ve got chickens.”
Whatever the case, Arkansas could certainly use the extra money based on the product it has put on the field in Ryan Silverfield’s first fall in Fayetteville.
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