Revenue distribution resolved at CFP expansion meeting; Rose Bowl issue remains: Source

The Rose Bowl remains one of the biggest hurdles to early College Football Playoff expansion, but revenue distribution was a key issue resolved on Wednesday. Here’s what you need to know:

The CFP’s Board of Managers met virtually on Wednesday to discuss both outstanding issues and acknowledged that the CFP will need to continue conversations with the Rose Bowl, a source with knowledge of the meeting told The Athletic.
The Board was able to resolve issues tied to revenue distribution for the 2024 and 2025 seasons, if the CFP is to expand from four to 12 teams before the end of its current contract.
The source said that the revenue distribution model agreed upon by the Board will make payouts more even per Power 5 school.

What else to know

As it stands now, each Power 5 league earns roughly the same payout each year, regardless of how many teams it sends to the CFP or how far they advance. That has created some friction, especially for schools in leagues that are expanding.

For example, Alabama, a team that has participated in the CFP almost every year of its existence, would be making less per year than Washington State, which has never come close to participating — all because a 16-team SEC will be dividing its revenue by more members than a 10- or 12-team Pac-12 will.

The compromise agreed upon Wednesday reduces disparity and allows the focus to be on per-school payouts instead of per-league payouts that then get sliced different ways based on varying membership size. Payouts to the Group of 5 leagues remain unchanged.

Such an agreement would only be in place for the 2024 and 2025 seasons, was the CFP to expand early. The CFP will sign an entirely new contract for 2026 and beyond, and those involved anticipate that many issues will be on the table again then. The expanding SEC and Big Ten are expected to push for a formula similar to the NCAA men’s basketball tournament, in which leagues receive payouts proportional to the number of teams they put in the field. – Auerbach

What’s left to figure out?

The biggest issue remains the schedule, and the position with the Rose Bowl is the biggest hurdle in that. The bowl wants broadcast window guarantees in the future CFP to host another non-CFP game every third year, in exchange for giving up its relationships with the Big Ten and Pac-12 early for 2024-25. The Rose Bowl wants to keep an exclusive 5 p.m. ET timeslot on New Year’s Day in the years it also has a semifinal in later weeks. That additional game every third year would go up against quarterfinal games in that same time slot. (In years the Rose Bowl is a quarterfinal, it wouldn’t be an issue.) CFP officials have been frustrated with Rose Bowl’s stance.

“As the only New Year’s Six bowl with an independent contract, we’re working to navigate our existing agreement,” Rose Bowl Management Committee Chair Laura Farber told ESPN last week. “While we’re willing to work through certain areas, we’ve maintained that an exclusive broadcast window on Jan. 1 at 2 p.m. PT is important to the Rose Bowl Game.” – Vannini

Backstory

In September, the Board, which is made up of 11 presidents and chancellors representing the 10 FBS conferences and Notre Dame, voted unanimously to expand the CFP to 12 teams. The Board tasked the 10 commissioners and Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick, who make up the CFP Management Committee, with working out logistics and contracts to figure out if the CFP could expand before the end of its existing contract, which runs through the 2025-26 season. The earliest the CFP can expand to 12 teams is for the 2024 season.

Commissioners have worked with venues and cities to determine if it was possible to move dates and hotel blocks for games on different days, and have discussed challenges with existing bowl contracts that run through the 2024 and 2025 seasons — most notably, the Rose Bowl, which has its own contract with the CFP and a hold on a very specific New Year’s Day timeslot.

Regarding revenue distribution: Under the current revenue distribution format, the Power 5 leagues get about 80 percent of the CFP revenue, and the Group of 5 get 20 percent. For the 2021-22 season, Power 5 leagues received approximately $74 million apiece from the CFP, with the five Group of 5 leagues splitting $95 million in aggregate.

Required reading

(Photo: Don Juan Moore / Getty Images)