If not for ‘The Alliance,’ college football’s muddled playoff picture would be much clearer this year

ATLANTA – They called it a “gentleman’s agreement.”

In August of 2021, leaders from three of the five Power Five conferences — the ACC, Big Ten and Pac-12 — formed a pact built around their educational and athletic missions.

They called it “The Alliance.”

They struck a verbal agreement to stick together on major decisions surrounding the future of college athletics. They held a news conference. They published a press release.

They didn’t need any written contract, one said. This was a “gentleman’s agreement.”

They insisted that the Alliance’s primary goal was not to serve as a voting bloc to impede, say, the passage of an expanded playoff.

It was about more, they said. It was about three like-minded leagues working to preserve the sanctity of college sports in the face of mounting external and internal pressures.

More than two years after the Alliance formed — and about a year after it unceremoniously collapsed — the pact between the ACC, Big Ten and Pac-12 stands as one of college sports’ greatest failures.

It prevented the sport’s postseason from expanding a year earlier than many officials had originally planned.

The College Football Playoff could have expanded a year earlier, but the failed ‘Alliance’ between the Big 12, Pac-12 and Big Ten bogged down expansion discussions. (Kevin Abele/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

Without that gentleman’s agreement, without the 16-month delay in approving an expanded playoff, without their hoops and hurdles, their roadblocks and speed bumps, college football’s postseason this year would likely incorporate not four teams but 12.

“You had that idea. That opportunity could have been there,” SEC commissioner Greg Sankey told Yahoo Sports in an interview earlier this week. “But I have colleagues that chose to simply oppose.”

Here on Saturday…

Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/if-not-for-the-alliance-college-footballs-muddled-playoff-picture-would-be-much-clearer-this-year-022809015.html

Author : Yahoo Sports

Publish date : 2023-12-03 02:28:09

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