Clark Lea Says 24-Team CFP May Cost $160 Million Title-Game Tradition

1 articles · Updated · Fox News · May 14

Clark Lea said College Football Playoff expansion is effectively coming, but college football must drop some traditional season-ending elements—potentially conference championship games—to avoid pushing the season deeper into January.
Three extra weeks on the calendar, Lea argued, already hurt the sport’s integrity by creating long breaks, colliding with NFL-driven TV windows and complicating the semester and transfer-portal timeline.
A reported $160 million tied to major conference title games makes any swap difficult, even as TV executives discuss replacing championship weekend with conference play-in games that could feed an expanded playoff.
Money is driving the fight: the SEC has backed 16 teams, while the Big Ten has pushed 24, with added games potentially opening new bidding from FOX, NBC or CBS under the new six-year ESPN deal.
That debate is set to intensify at upcoming Big Ten and SEC spring meetings, where coaches’ calls to tighten the calendar will compete with conferences’ push to maximize playoff revenue.

With a 24-team playoff looming, will college football's valuable regular season and championship games become obsolete?

Who now controls college football's future: the powerful SEC and Big Ten conferences, or new federal government oversight?