Count Ohio State athletic director Ross Bjork among those who believe the College Football Playoff should expand again.
From Ohio State’s perspective, at least from a football standpoint, there shouldn’t be any need for the CFP to expand again. Since the CFP started in 2014, Ohio State would have made every 12-team playoff based on the final CFP rankings. The Buckeyes made half of the 10 four-team playoffs, so they didn’t necessarily need the CFP to expand the first time around (though they wouldn’t have won last year’s national championship if it didn’t).
Bjork, however, knows that more CFP games equal more money for the teams and conferences that participate in the playoff. And because of that, Bjork believes it’s best for college football if the playoff expands again.
“Selfishly, Ohio State could stay at four; we could go back to four and most years, probably be okay. At 12, we should be okay. We gotta keep doing our part, right? I mean, we gotta keep investing and keep coaching and keep recruiting at a high level,” Bjork said Wednesday during an interview with Front Office Sports. “But I'm a believer that for the good of the game, for the health of the game, for content, for high-level matchups, we should expand.”
With the Big Ten and SEC in charge of determining the next CFP format, proposed formats for the next round of expansions have ranged from 16-team models to as many as 32 teams. The conferences have clashed on how many automatic bids each conference should receive in a more expanded playoff, with the Big Ten pushing for at least four guaranteed berths in the next CFP model.
Bjork didn’t say what he thinks the ideal CFP model would be, but indicated he’s open to any number of teams, believing that more playoff expansion will lead to more high-level games and more revenue.
“Could we go to 16? Could we go to 20? Could we go to 24? There's proposals out there to go to 28. There's been a couple other proposals to go to 32 … We all get hung up in these numbers; 24, 28. ‘Oh my God, they can't do this.’ But here's what you cannot argue with – nobody can argue with this – what's wrong with more high-level football? What's wrong with more meaningful postseason content? What's wrong with keeping the postseason alive for as many teams as possible? So to me, nobody can argue with that piece,” Bjork said.
“Now how you get there, automatic qualifying spots, how many should the Big Ten have and the SEC, that's where everybody kind of gets hung up. But if you just take high-level content, meaningful content for football; if you take maybe the conference championship weekend and morph that into the playoffs, if you take bowl games that are part of the system and you call them playoff games, what's wrong with that? And so to me, we need to kind of take a step back. Let's do what's right by the game. Let's add more content. Let's add more value.”
“I'm a believer that for the good of the game, for the health of the game, for content, for high-level matchups, we should expand.”– Ross Bjork on College football playoff expansion
Bjork’s desire for more playoff expansion goes hand in hand with the start of revenue sharing in college sports, as there’s more incentive than ever before for college athletic departments to generate more revenue to share with their athletes on top of covering all of their other expenses.
“The system needs more money. So if you have these high-profile games that are playoff games, there's more money into the system, which then goes back to the athletes,” Bjork said. “So to me, hopefully we can get to a good place where expansion can really be well thought out between all the conferences, knowing that the Big Ten and the SEC are gonna drive the way.”
During his interview with Front Office Sports, Bjork also said that Ohio State is embracing NIL “at the highest level” and wants to “be as aggressive as you can be given the environment.” Bjork was also asked about Dave Portnoy’s alleged ban from Ohio Stadium and said Ohio State was not responsible for Portnoy’s exclusion from FOX’s in-stadium set for Big Noon Kickoff.
“You really need to ask Fox what the programming plan is,” Bjork said. “We never had to react to anything, because Fox said, ‘This is exactly what we're gonna do.’ And we said, ‘OK, great. We'll see you guys on Saturday. See you on game day.’”
