Before Tuesday night’s revealing of the College Football Playoff first poll, experts were predicting the 12-team bracket.
As expected, almost everyone believes the Playoff will be dominated by the Big Ten and SEC with each of the most powerful conferences in the country getting four bids.
Most likely, both league offices will feel they are being shortchanged.
Why? Because like everything else in college football, these days it is about the money.
All 12 teams that make the field will get $4 million. Every time a team plays, it also gets $3 million for expenses.
The field of eight gets $4 million. The final four get $6 million, as do the two who reach the championship game.
Just as an example, that means the SEC pool — which gets divided evenly each year — will start with $16 million, as will the Big Ten.
Just for fun, let’s say Texas is the No. 5 seed and beats No. 12 Boise State. The Longhorns then beat No. 4 Miami and advance to the final four.
Just for more fun, let’s say the SEC newbies beat No. 1 Oregon to advance to the championship game, banking $20 million for the SEC.
That doesn’t include what the other three SEC teams earn or what the other teams earn in bowls, such as the Sugar — which pays $6 million per school before expenses.
Last year. the SEC earned almost $80 million from bowl revenue and it had only one team, Alabama, in the playoffs. Texas made the field, but it was a member of the Big 12.
The SEC, or the Big Ten, could end up with two teams in the championship.
The playoff selection committee can seed the teams in a way so that they face each other before that. But with four teams participating, a league controls its own destiny just by winning.
Unless, of course, the committee puts all four SEC or Big Ten teams in one end of the bracket, but that isn’t likely.
At a minimum, SEC football will bring in $100 million this season — probably more — and it happens to come at a time when every school in America but a handful is worried about a payroll that will include every athlete on scholarship.
What isn’t being discussed much is that the two teams in the championship game could be playing in their 17th game, the same number of regular-season games as the NFL.
Another thing that isn’t being discussed, at least out loud, that as schools are staring at an additional $22 million per year for those athletes’ salaries, coaches’ salaries seem to be off limits.
If every head football and basketball coach took a 10% cut, it would mean more than million a year saved in the current payroll.
Not to pick on any one coach, but Lane Kiffin could easily live in Oxford on $9 million a year instead of $10 million, even with his ex-wife reportedly building a house there and his children enrolled in school there, meaning, he may not be as quick to jump to another program as some think.
On a sidenote, it doesn’t seem the Kiffins are getting back together, but putting their children first.
Anyway, the CFP’s first poll was just that, the first one and there is still a bunch of games in November to remember or try to forget.
Oregon has only Maryland, Wisconsin and Washington left, and that should make them the No. 1 seed.
In the preseason UCLA Coach DeShaun Foster said: “Oregon doesn’t have (a salary cap), but we do.”
Oregon is undefeated and flush with Nike money.
With the 12-team playoffs, the rich will get richer and they don’t want to share with the smaller schools anymore.
It is all about the money.
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