Penn State Athletic Director Pat Kraft is a fan of the College Football Playoff doubling in size.
The Big Ten— which Penn State plays in, for those who don’t know— has reportedly floated the idea of expanding the Playoff from 12 teams to 24 or maybe even 28.
Here’s what Kraft said on the matter.
WHAT KRAFT SAID
Pat Kraft Penn St. Volleyball September 18, 2024 David Hague/NSN
When speaking with reporters Tuesday afternoon, Kraft said he felt ESPN’s report of the potential expansion got out earlier than Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti wanted it to.
“Tony is very open with us,” Kraft said, “and so we had, we had seen it in a very rough format. Look, I think it’s an interesting concept. I like it personally. I think it creates a lot of excitement for the regular season.”
For Kraft, this allows teams to pay more attention to non-conference scheduling.
There’d be a lot less risk involved with scheduling out-of-conference powerhouses with 24 or 28 playoff spots as opposed to the current number.
“What I do think it does is it allows you to focus on your entire schedule a little bit more,” Kraft said. “Right now, you have to win games. You have to go in there, and if you’re doing to challenge yourself, how is the committee going to look at you? And I think that’s a really important piece to all this. So everybody’s pushing back on the (automatic qualifiers) and a lot of people are talking about that. I think in a room, where in a place where it’s ’let’s discuss every option.’”
Kraft is hopeful that the potential expansion is something that the commissioners of the ACC, Big Ten, Big 12 and SEC can discuss.
“It’s in a place right now where I hope the four commissioners can get in a room and discuss this,” he said.
Last month at Big Ten Media Days in Las Vegas, James Franklin doubled down on his previously stated stance that it’s not right for the Big Ten to play nine conference games and the SEC to play eight.
Add Nittany Sports Now as a preferred source in Google! Click here to add us.Kraft brought up that issue, as well.
“The SEC doesn’t play as many conference games,” he said. “Okay, how do you judge that? How do you base that? That’s hard to do. You can put any metric you want, but we know that’s a fact, good, bad and different. Other than Tony Shaw’s 28 model, they were looking at different ways to shore off that selection criteria.”
Kraft then said four words that every sports fan can get behind.
MORE ABOUT THE MODEL
Kraft also mentioned that an expanded playoff would require a deeper look into conference championship games.
“I think the critical issue in all this, and this may be not out there is in order to get more games and not put more games on there, we’re going to have to look at championship weekend,” he said.
Per Pete Thamel’s original ESPN report, this would take out conference championship games entirely.
“While the idea is in the very early stages,” Thamel wrote, “the proposal eliminates conference title games and offers a large number of auto bids for all four power leagues, sources said.”
Here’s how the slots would be decided, per Thamel.
- Seven automatic bids for the Big Ten and SEC
- Five for the ACC and Big 12
- Two for non-Power Four teams
- Two at-large bids.
“The 28-team format would put 20 playoff games on campus, which would accentuate the success of that from last year’s CFP,” Thamel reported. “The CFP committee would seed the field and pick the at-large teams.”
For this season at least, the amount of teams will stay at 12, and Penn State figures to be one of them.
Penn State opens the season against Nevada Aug. 30. Kickoff is scheduled for 3:30 on CBS.
