Canzano: Super Sized playoff? Big Ten/SEC stranglehold? Pac-12 officiating?
Emptying the notebook.
Washington State football coach Jake Dickert shared something he’s been thinking about with me this week.
“We need to go to a 28-team playoff,” Dickert told me. “The kids have proven they only want to play in the playoffs, so why not? Let’s give the people what they want. There are no conference champions. The conferences are so big. So let’s open it up and have a real playoff like Division II and Division III. They find a way to do 28 teams. That would create a lot of excitement.”
The Cougars are 7-1 with four games left on the schedule. The first College Football Playoff rankings will be released next Tuesday. WSU isn’t eligible for a conference championship berth this season. Dickert knows his team, even at 11-1, would need help to reach the 12-team playoff field with an at-large berth.
Scrub Conference Title Games?
Dickert said he’d like to see college football move the start of the season to mid-August, do away with conference championship games, and start that 28-team playoff a week after the end of the season.
Would TV go for it?
The conference championship games are included as part of the media-rights package. The networks paid for them and won’t give them up. The current rights deals would need to sunset. That pushes this conversation out to at least 2028 or so. The CFP and ESPN also signed a six-year, $7.8 billion contract last spring. ESPN holds the rights to the event through the 2031-32 season.
Would the Big Ten and SEC be on board?
It’s like Gordon Gekko said: “Money never sleeps.” If there’s more revenue in it, they’d be all ears. But those conferences have their ideas about the future. There’s also the question of what would happen with bowl games.
“These kids want to play in meaningful games,” Dickert said. “The bowl system has had its turn. It’s time to evolve into a bigger playoff system. It took us so long to get a two-team playoff, then a four-team playoff, and now we’re at 12.
“It will get there.”
‘Checks and Balances’ for Big Ten and SEC?
I had a conversation with a long-time university president, who expressed concern about the Big Ten and SEC running away with college football.
The university president said: “There are no checks and balances. The fear of ‘being left out’ drove everyone else to concede any sort of real voice and/or decision-making. The presidents also conceded leadership to the commissioners. Combine it all, and the Big Ten and SEC are at the top and have no reason to let anyone else share that space.”
The same president is eager to see if the 12-team playoff might provide a contender from the Big 12, ACC, or Group of Five.
“The only way to break the (Big Ten and SEC) stranglehold is for someone outside of those two conferences to win the national championship and to consistently compete for the very best athletes,” the president said. “With the expansions of Texas and Oklahoma to SEC and Oregon and USC to Big Ten, those conferences effectively acquired anyone with the resources to compete nationally and consistently.”
Out of His Mind or Not?
There are 62 voters in the AP Top 25 poll. Jon Wilner of The San Jose Mercury News is the only voter who didn’t rank Oregon at No. 1 this week. He has Georgia in the No. 1 spot and the Ducks at No. 2. Wilner and I discussed his logic and vote in this week’s podcast episode.
“I heavily weigh who you play, where you play, and how you do,” Wilner told me. “So strength of schedule and strength of competition matters a lot to me, probably more than other voters, which is fine. There’s no right or wrong. Specifically, with the case of Oregon vs. Georgia, Oregon has one fewer loss, but Georgia has played a much tougher schedule, and their performance in the big games has been better than Oregon.”
We discussed the danger of ‘groupthink’ and how we both approach our Heisman voting responsibility in this week’s episode of “Canzano & Wilner.” We also talked my Hall of Fame vote for the Baseball Writer’s Association of America.
Waving a Magic Wand at the NCAA Rules
Arizona State coach Kenny Dillingham was our podcast and videocast guest last week. If you didn’t catch the episode, give it a look.
Dillingham is a hoot. His team is 5-2. At one point, I asked him what NCAA rule he’d change if he could wave a magic wand. He didn’t hesitate.
“Redshirt rule,” Dillingham said. “Just remove it and give kids five years. In today’s portal era with the transferring and the four years, I think it’s really unfair to go to a player to say: ‘Listen, we need you to play this game, but it’s your fifth game,’ and make a player have to decide. I don’t think it’s fair to put an athlete in a decision where we’re forcing him to either quit on his team or quit on his career.
“I don’t think that’s fair.”
“We Got Our A** Kicked”
Bobby Hurley’s ASU basketball team got smoked 103-47 in an exhibition loss to Duke on Sunday. Hurley was candid after the game.
“We got our a** kicked,” he said. “‘Hats off’ to where they are and ‘Oh sh*t’ about where we are right now.”
Hurley’s return to Cameron Indoor Stadium was honored all weekend. The six-foot guard helped Duke win back-to-back national titles in 1991 and 1992. Former coach Mike Krzyzewski was part of the festivities.
Krzyzewski said: “I absolutely loved coaching Bobby.”
Who Doesn’t Love Beach Football?
The turf at Snapdragon Stadium became a talking point after Washington State’s 29-26 victory over San Diego State on Saturday. The field surface was torn up and sandy, but both teams had to play on it.
Washington State quarterback John Mateer told me: “I was running and slipping. During the game, I was getting frustrated because these are people I normally make miss, and I couldn’t because I had to take a double stick. If you look closely, when I caught the ball on my long run, I twitched my head. I did that because sand was on top of the ball, and it landed on my face. It was wild.”
Snapdragon Stadium is not a one-tenant facility. It’s home to the Aztecs in football, San Diego’s NWSL team, and a rugby team. San Diego’s MLS franchise will also begin playing there in 2025.
The city’s NWSL coach, Landon Donovan, criticized the turf after their Oct. 17 game. Nine days later, WSU-SDSU kicked off their football game. It’s a newish grass field, and not the first one installed since the stadium opened in 2022. Between the weather and heavy usage, the turf crew at the stadium is having a difficult time getting it established, per a source.
Mateer said: “It’s not for me to say ‘you need to do this and that,’ but ideally for peak performance for all the athletes, they gotta get that fixed.”
Questions about Pac-12 Officiating
There was grumbling from San Diego State fans about a ‘no call’ on an apparent pass interference on the Aztecs’ final possession of the game against Washington State. Also, about an illegal ‘crack-back’ block that officials flagged on the same drive.
The game was part of a previously scheduled home-and-home series and not the 2024 Mountain West/Pac-12 scheduling alliance. The officials assigned to the game were a Pac-12 crew.
I’ve been critical of the Pac-12’s football officiating over the years. The long-time Supervisor of Officials, David Coleman, is a nice guy, but he isn’t qualified. The league has no feeder system and shaky leadership.
The old-world Pac-12 employed 64 football officials. About two-thirds of them went to work in other leagues after the conference splintered. The majority of them landed in ‘Power 4’ conferences (Big Ten and Big 12) to help cover the new demand created by expansion. Some others went to the Mountain West. The Pac-12 retained three full crews that are being employed and rotated on games this season.
It’s very early, but I’m interested in how the Pac-12 rebuilds the football officiating team before kickoff of the 2026 season.
My to-do list for the new-world Pac-12:
Hire a qualified Supervisor of Officials. (My first call would be long-time NFL official Tony Corrente, who famously quit on Larry Scott.)
Create a training pipeline by forming a consortium with the Big Sky Conference. (The Mountain West won’t take the Pac-12’s call right now, and it already has an arrangement with the Big 12.)
Focus heavily on recruiting and retention. (Take the top-rated MW officials. Scout them right now.)
Re-build public trust. (Transparency wins.)
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There is no perfect playoff system. In the four team playoff, the number five and six schools always complained about being slighted. In the new 12 school playoff, numbers 13 and 14 are going to cry, and so is numbers 29 and 30 in a 28 team system. Let’s wait and see how well, or not, the 12 team system works out before the crying and posturing begins.
It’s Landon Donovan, by the way.