What is next for the CFP after USC and UCLA move to Big Ten?
What is the playoff going to look like in the future? Whatever the SEC and the Big Ten want it to look like. Dan Wetzel and Pat Forde react to the blockbuster news out of college football on Thursday.
Video Transcript
[CHEERING]
DAN WETZEL: Man, if I'm a USC football fan, I was sitting there yesterday, going we got Lincoln Riley. We got all these recruits coming in. We are dominating in recruiting in our area. Oregon's doing all right too. But that's pretty much it that's going to be able to look us in the eye. We get an automatic bid to this playoff, and we are sitting pretty for the next 10 years. Now, today, you sit there and go, oh, boy. We are in for a dogfight, and we don't even know all the challenges.
PAT FORDE: That's right.
DAN WETZEL: Playoff to me is now way up in the air.
PAT FORDE: Totally.
DAN WETZEL: OK? And this is why they-- I've been saying this for years. When they throw you a life preserver, stop throwing it back.
PAT FORDE: Yeah.
DAN WETZEL: The Big East once said we don't want automatic bids. We don't want a playoff with automatic bids. We don't want a playoff at all. There is no Big East football anymore. They once could have had one of the six automatic bids or all automatic bids. The Big 12, when Dan Beebe was running that thing, we don't want a playoff with automatic bids. We don't want a playoff at all.
PAT FORDE: Right.
DAN WETZEL: The thing's gutted. Bowlsby tried to grab it at the end, but it was too late.
PAT FORDE: Yep.
DAN WETZEL: The Pac-12 thought they were on such high ground, the floodwaters weren't going to get to them. We used this analogy recently. We don't need automatic bids. Let's just wait two years. We'll renegotiate then.
PAT FORDE: Wow.
DAN WETZEL: You kicked it away.
PAT FORDE: Yeah.
DAN WETZEL: You aren't getting an automatic bid. It's over.
PAT FORDE: Yeah.
DAN WETZEL: Your league is done. You dumbasses.
[LAUGHTER]
The Big Ten can have its own four-team playoff at the end of the year and play its championship game at the Rose Bowl.
PAT FORDE: Yeah.
DAN WETZEL: It's for rent.
[LAUGHTER]
I mean, what is this playoff going to look like, right? Eight teams? 12?
PAT FORDE: I don't know. It's going to look like whatever the SEC and Big Ten want it to look like. If there is-- all right, so let's tease this out. If things progress, continue, if the acceleration continues here-- and there may be some contracts that hold this up-- but Big Ten, in the near future, grabs Washington and Oregon to go to 18. SEC, Clemson, Florida State, let's go. North Carolina, you got your choice. Which one you want, the SEC or Big Ten? Virginia maybe. I don't know if there's a fourth ACC team. But if not, hey, there's also Notre Dame, which is finding itself being painted into a corner here.
DAN WETZEL: Everyone's reaching out to the Big Ten right now.
PAT FORDE: Yeah, sure.
DAN WETZEL: I talked to one Pac-12 source earlier, and it was like, this is-- yeah, I mean--
PAT FORDE: Yeah, no--
DAN WETZEL: Everything sucks.
PAT FORDE: Yeah, I talked to a Pac-12 source before we taped here that there was an AD meeting yesterday in the Pac-12. And nobody saw this coming, nor was it discussed. What about this make sense? Find me the sense, other than the dollars and cents. It just isn't there, so it's like I think-- believe nothing. Think that anything, actually anything, could happen. Absolutely anything could happen in the next decade in this enterprise.
DAN WETZEL: All right, I'm going to go with the Big 20.
PAT FORDE: OK.
DAN WETZEL: Big Ten times two.
PAT FORDE: OK.
DAN WETZEL: We'll call it-- what's that Little Caesar's-- pizza, pizza?
PAT FORDE: Pizza, pizza. League, league.
DAN WETZEL: Big Ten, Big Ten.
[LAUGHTER]
I'm going to go with the Big 20.
PAT FORDE: OK.
DAN WETZEL: This is so dumb. I'm going to say they're going to grab Cal and Stanford. I'm going to say they're going to grab Oregon and Washington. All right, so that means the Big 12, Big 12 will take Utah, Colorado, the two Arizona schools. They'd be at 16 then. Oregon State and Washington State go to the Mountain West, which probably, at that point, have like--
PAT FORDE: Yeah.
DAN WETZEL: Our man Thomas Clark out in Hawaii, they're still stuck wherever they are.
PAT FORDE: Maui Tom, sorry, man.
DAN WETZEL: Maui Tom, sorry about that.
