The College football playoff suddenly has 33% more games added to its schedule because of the earth-shattering changes taking place in college football. Now most people wouldn’t see a problem with this, due to the fact if you like this league you would want to see more. But that is not what these owners were thinking at all; they wanted the revenue of payouts, media rights, and economic impact increased every year. This is a heartbreaker for the people who love how the CFP used to be run with their 12 regular game seasons back in 2002.
These owners made their impact in 2006 by adding conference championships to the schedule. This wasn’t a problem with anyone: at the time it seemed a good idea. The owners also added a conference championship to push the season to fifteen games. The problem comes when more games are added to the perfect system. Of course, the record books had to be amended to assign the statistics for the extra games so all records will have asterisks to denote the longer seasons
Media rights and overall postseason monies drove the market. ESPN agreed to pay roughly $7.3 billion over 12 years for CFP media rights — about $600 million+ per year to air CFP games and associated bowls, according to ESPN. This large media deal is the backbone of the playoff system’s revenue and supports big payouts to conferences.
The financial plague spread to the colleges with the inception of the NIL (name image likeness) deals. The payouts for conferences and schools have flipped the collegiate football world on its head. Old powers have given way to new powers like Indiana, who built their team from the transfer portal and have their own billionaire to back them.
CFP Payout Structure: These payouts go to the conferences, which generally redistribute to member schools. College Football Playoff+1
