Troy Dannen gives opinion on 12-team playoff format, concern for small conferences

After finding major bowl success at Tulane and later at Washington, incoming Nebraska athletic director Troy Dannen is looking to get the Cornhuskers back on college football’s biggest stages. As he explained at his introductory press conference, that means making the expanded College Football Playoff.

Dannen shared that he has a very high opinion of the 12-team playoff format, even if it does lead to concerns for small conferences.

“We’re managing to get in the 12. One thing Coach [Matt Rhule] and I have talked about is how do we get into the 12,” Troy Dannen said. “I love the expanded Playoff…Everybody in the 12 will walk into this thing thinking they have a chance to win the whole thing, and I think it’s going to be great for the game.”

Troy Dannen added that he feels one of the great things about college football is it catches the imagination of the entire country and that he doesn’t want to lose the idea that every FBS team is chasing that same championship.

“The one thing I’ll just tell you I worry about, I do want to make sure that 133 schools that play FBS football, we’re all chasing the same trophy. Those who, whether it’s financial wherewithal or from governance or whatever else, fall away from that ability, college football is, you know, college football and professional football has an outsized role in society. I don’t want to lose that.”

Prior to becoming the athletic director at Nebraska, Troy Dannen held the same role at Northern Iowa, Tulane, and Washington. In 2022, under his leadership, the Green Wave won the Cotton Bowl, which was Tulane’s first major bowl win since 1934. The next year, he was the athletic director at Washington when the Huskies made the Playoff and played for a championship.

“I want the game to be healthy. I don’t want just us [Nebraska] to be healthy and I don’t want just the Big Ten to be healthy,” Dannen said. “But, we all have a responsibility to the good of the game, and I can’t tell you exactly how that manifests itself going forward but it is important. I think the 12-team Playoff will actually be good for the game. Good for the whole.”

Troy Dannen takes over at Nebraska and heaped praise on the 12-team format just as it was announced that the format will change again. The Playoff is set to expand to 14 teams. In that model, there has also been a push by the SEC and Big Ten to give their conference champions automatic byes. Now, those two conferences will also earn more of the financial distribution than the other power conferences.

Nebraska AD Troy Dannen: ‘I think the world is going to revolve around the Big Ten and SEC’

Nebraska being in the Big Ten is going to be huge for the program moving forward, especially given that Troy Dannen expects the world to revolve around the Big Ten and the SEC. That is, in large part, because of the Playoff revenue moving forward.

“I think the world is going to revolve around the Big Ten and the SEC,” Dannen said. “I think we saw that with the CFP revenue distribution model that came out.”