How College Football Playoff’s automatic bids impact conference realignment

The Pac-12 has seen three schools, USC, UCLA, and Colorado leave for new conferences recently. On top of that, there are rumors that there may be more teams on the move. However, in an expanded College Football Playoff, there may be some benefit to staying.

During the Andy Staples On3 show, Justin Hopkins of Scoop Duck explained that it might be wise to stay in the 12-team College Football Playoff era.

“It’s very interesting because Oregon does feel like they have a big brand, but the not getting locked in part feels important,” Andy Staples said. “The other part of it is Playoff access.”

“You know, if a version of the Pac-12 survives, it feels like Oregon, Washington, if Utah stays, those three are just slugging it out for a spot every single year.”

In the expanded College Football Playoff, which begins in 2024, there will be six automatic bids and six at-large bids. Those automatic bids go to the six highest-ranked conference champions. That means that teams from schools outside the SEC and Big Ten are guaranteed access down to at least one Group of Five conference.

“Yeah, I totally agree, and I think a lot of fans don’t see that, like close to Oregon, close to Washington, they don’t see that,” Justin Hopkins said. “And if you take a step back and say, ‘Hey, man, you know the top three, maybe if Stanford can continue to develop, maybe your top four, you’re slugging it out.’ That’s probably the easiest path to the Playoff if you can remain in some sort of conference that remains competitive financially.”

There is a lot of desire among fans to move to the Big Ten. However, given the logistics, including how many more talented teams they’d be competing with, it could actually be harder to make the College Football Playoff.

“A move to the Big Ten is going to make that really difficult, not just because there’s great programs out there. That’s a lot of travel, and big travel. And I don’t think fans are really thinking long-term. I think they’re thinking short-term, like, ‘Oh, the Pac can’t survive.’ It can survive. It’s actually not that hard to imagine them surviving. But, if they’re only making $20 million a year, they’re gonna continue dying the slow death.”

At this point, Staples asked how important College Football Playoff access is to Oregon. As Hopkins explained, it matters but it also helps that Oregon can make up financial gaps better than other programs.

“So, well, so the way I feel about this is, Colorado, for example, and Arizona, for example, I don’t know if they have the resources financially that Oregon does or Washington does. So, I think schools need to take the decisions and make it for themselves, so Oregon, let’s say they’re losing $10 million a year in revenue, media deal revenue, they can sustain that. They can figure out a way to come up with that money and remain competitive. Washington can probably do the same,” Hopkins said.

“Arizona and Colorado, I don’t think, could manage that quite as easily. So, they needed to make a decision for them which they felt, ‘Hey, we’re gonna take the Big 12,’ in Colorado’s case. We’re gonna go to the Big 12 and make sure we’re getting that set amount of money. But if you’re Oregon and Washington with what it sounds like the proposed deal is, you’re almost betting on yourself to remain in the Pac under this revised deal and say, ‘Hey, we believe we can win games, and if we win games we’re going to be rewarded financially for it.’ So, not everybody needs to make the same decision Colorado does.”

Paul Finebaum advises Pac-12 schools to jump ship

College Football analyst Paul Finebaum doesn’t see any point in teams remaining in the Pac-12 and advised the likes of Arizona, Arizona State, and Utah to jump ship.

“Jump, run, do anything they can to get away from the Pac-12. I mean, I was listening to Pete (Thamel) and you’re going to go to a college president when he has a good deal over here and say, ‘Hey listen doctor, president of Arizona, Arizona State, Utah, be patient. If we can get enough people to sign up on Apple that we are going to be great,'” Finebaum said.

“Well the bottom line is this guys, nobody’s signing up on Apple to watch the Pac-12 because there’s nothing to watch once you lose Colorado, UCLA, and USC. I mean, I don’t want to be the guy that keeps burying this lede, because I think I did it the other day, but I’m gonna keep doing it. Somebody needs to shovel dirt on this league and end this charade. It’s over for the Pac-12 And these three don’t get out of there, they’re going down with the ship.”