Ohio State’s athletic director recently sided in favor of the potential expansion of the College Football Playoff.
Ross Bjork, the Buckeyes’ athletic director, told Front Office Sports that he prefers the expanded playoffs, and that even though football-wise, Ohio State is never going to be at-risk, however, believes an expanded playoffs has high economic upside.
Bjork said that although Ohio State could survive with just four or 12 teams, he noted that more playoff games bring in more revenue for participating teams and conferences, and argued that another round of expansion is what’s best for the sport.
“Selfishly, Ohio State could stay at four; we could go back to four and most years, probably be OK. At 12, we should be OK. We’ve got to keep doing our part, right? I mean, we’ve got to keep investing and keep coaching and keep recruiting at a high level,” Bjork said. “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.”
Bjork emphasized that while people often focus on the size of the playoff field, the value of the expanded playoff lies in creating more opportunities for high-level football and meaningful postseason games.
“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,” Bjork said. “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.”
In his interview with Front Office Sports, Bjork also said the financial implications make playoff expansion appealing, since turning marquee matchups into playoff games would generate more revenue. Though, he stated future expansion will be carefully planned across conferences, with the Big Ten and SEC expected to lead the way.
He continued, stating that he understands why people get hung up on the complexities of the game like championship games and automatic bids, the priority of college football should be to expand opportunities that enhance the sport overall.
“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.”
