MAC Commish Talks CFP Formats
MAC Commissioner Dr. Jon Steinbrecher isn't as concerned with the size of the CFP Bracket as much as who will be in it.
During MAC Football Media Day on Thursday, commissioner Dr. Jon Steinbrecher was asked his opinion on the current College Football Playoff model and his ideas for his optimal format.
“I like 12,” Steinbrecher told ESPN, referring to the current College Football Playoff Model. “In a perfect world, I think 16 would be the number.
“But there are an array of logistical challenges, high on that list are the number of TV windows available, quite frankly. Where do you fit games in? How do you avoid going up against NFL games and things like that? It's not just as simple as putting the bracket up.”
After a single season of the initial CFP model, there will be changes in Year 2 as automatic byes will no longer be reserved only for the highest-ranked conference champions. Instead, they will be awarded to the four highest-ranked teams whether they were conference champs or not.
Different proposals to expand the bracket - most notably to 14 or 16 - continue to be made.
A 14-team bracket would drop the number of byes down to two while a 16-team bracket would eliminate byes altogether.
“I can be satisfied being at 12, being at 14, being at 16,” Steinbrecher said.
Steinbrecher is more concerned with how those 12, 14 or 16 teams are selected.
“The details around that are important,” he said. “I think how we populate that bracket is important.”
The power conferences, especially the SEC and Big Ten, are trying to use their leverage to reserve additional selections for their members beyond the conference champs, an idea Steinbrecher isn’t in favor of.
“I'm not a big fan of preordained slots for conferences,” he continued. “I think honor the championship, honor the five highest-ranked champions, and then let's select the others, whether it's 11 additional or 13 additional or 15 additional.”
Expansion isn’t the biggest challenge and he believes the additional games and debates will be good for the sport.
“There's going to be controversy around it,” he acknowledged. “But you know what? That's great. It's also what makes that month of December and November and January so vibrant. It becomes our version of March Madness, but it lasts a little longer. It's great and I think the committee does a great job. It's a hard job and I get the noise around it, but I think it's worked pretty well.
“We've got to figure out where to put the games, but it doesn't necessarily add extra weeks or things like that. The bracket size stays the same. It eliminates the byes. We'll see where it goes. I think where we're hung up right now is really a question around how we populate the bracket. We've got to come to an agreement on that and if we can't, then we continue to do exactly what we're doing today, which will be 12 teams under the current format.”
But the selection process is what’s most important because Steinbrecher is convinced MAC teams can have a chance to make the field, especially with the current format reserving one spot for the highest-ranked non-Power 4 team.
“Our history, if we would go back and look at what we've done, it seems like every four or five years, we pop that team that has that magic year and positions themselves for doing that,” he said.
“We had the Western Michigan year (in 2016). It could have been NIU back to back years, right. They get upset the second year (2013), or they'd have been in the Fiesta Bowl that year.”
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