The Rose Bowl has agreed to allow the College Football Playoff to expand to 12 teams in the 2024 and ‘25 seasons, per reports.
ESPN’s Pete Thamel was the first to report it.
Source: CFP officials have been informed that the Rose Bowl has signed an agreement that will allow the College Football Playoff to expand to 12 teams in 2024 and 2025.
— Pete Thamel (@PeteThamel) December 1, 2022
The College Football Playoff Board of Managers had already agreed to go from four teams to 12 starting in 2026, but now, it looks like the first 12-team playoff will come two years earlier, thanks to the Rose Bowl being on board.
After waiting for months, the Rose Bowl will amend its contract to allow for expansion in 2024.
An official announcement from the College Football Playoff is expected to happen soon.
Sports Illustrated reported Monday that, several weeks back, the Playoff gave the Rose Bowl until the end of November to decide what it wanted to do.
“In many ways,” SI wrote, “the Rose Bowl was holding the CFP hostage, at risk of its own stake in future Playoffs.”
SI also wrote that the Rose Bowl was “in a position to single-handily delay Playoff expansion.”
Playoff officials needed all six College Football Playoff bowl games to be on board for expansion to happen before the Playoff’s contract with expend expires after the 2025 season. The other five bowls— Cotton, Fiesta, Orange, Peach, Sugar— were on board.
Add Nittany Sports Now as a preferred source in Google! Click here to add us.SI wrote that the Rose Bowl could have cost the Playoff more than $450 million in added revenue that would be generated from expanded Playoffs in 2024 and ‘25, and 16 additional playoff spots.
If the Playoff were at 12 teams this season, Penn State would be in it. Coach James Franklin’s team is No. 8 in the College Football Playoff rankings, with no risk of losing a conference championship game and falling down the rankings.
If the expansion started in 2016, Penn State would have played in the playoff every year from 2016-19.
Who knows how the program would be viewed if Penn State had four playoff berths under Franklin instead of zero? Nonetheless, this change comes at what should he a great time for Penn State. The program bounced back this season. After going 11-11 between 2020 and ‘21, Penn State has a chance to win 11 games this season alone, finishing the regular season 10-2 with the bowl game still to play. Players like Drew Allar, Nick Singleton, Kaytron Allen and Abdul Carter are finishing up their true freshman seasons and are set to be big time players for Penn State next season and the year after that.
Tentatively, the first round of the expanded Playoffs would start the third week of December, probably kicking off Friday and Saturday, SI wrote. The quarterfinals would be scheduled around New Year’s Day, with three being played January 1 and one on either New Year’s Eve or Jan. 2.
Update (11:26 AM)-
𝗢𝗙𝗙𝗜𝗖𝗜𝗔𝗟 𝗔𝗡𝗡𝗢𝗨𝗡𝗖𝗘𝗠𝗘𝗡𝗧: The College Football Playoff will expand to 12 teams beginning in the 2024-25 season!
Details » https://t.co/O4ZiAOQ4HZ#CFBPlayoff 🏈🏆 pic.twitter.com/5ZTVGXTZbo
— College Football Playoff (@CFBPlayoff) December 1, 2022
