My CFP Expansion Anger + Clemson Behind The Scenes

The Truth Teller: College Football’s Playoff Expansion Crisis

“This is the most wildly unpopular proposal that I ever remember. See, that's the key difference to me is back when we were in a four-team playoff, Jesse, and they said, let's expand it, I would venture to guess 60 plus percent of the public supported it. I didn't, but I knew I was in the minority. 60 plus percent of the public supported expansion at that time. We've run poll after poll. I've seen the athletic run a poll. Like Clay Travis, who by the way, what a fantastic baton drop by our boy supporting this nonsense. He ran a poll the other day. A bunch of folks have run polls. Every one of them is somewhere between the range of 88% to 92% against. It is very hard to get 90% of people to agree that the sky is one given color.”

Debunking the Bad Faith Arguments

“You're not creating more meaningful games. You're just taking meaning off of certain games and putting it on other games. Ohio State and Michigan, each facing each other at 10-1, not only know they're in the 2014 playoff, they're in with a bye, Jesse, according to some of the formats I've seen. And we've taken meaning off of a game that features teams actually capable of going on to win the whole thing, and we've manufactured meaning on like 8-3 Nebraska versus 8-3 Iowa, you know, to lock down the 22 seed.”

The Access Myth and the Coaches’ Motives

“The coaches' voices matter. Absolutely, collectively, the coaches' voices matter. Am I surprised that people whose livelihood depends on them making the playoff, want a bigger playoff. Of course I'm not. Of course not. That's why we've said for months, years, I don't know, that coaches are not all due respect the source that I'm going to go to for this. It's not the collective opinion that I'm going to respect or even give a lot of attention to because their motivations are different than mine.”

The Real Reason: Financial Mismanagement, Not Survival

“The answer is run your organizations in a fiscally responsible manner on the front end. And if you can't get out of the way and let someone else do it. continue to screw up, and then allow the people who made the original screw-up to screw up more to fix their original screw-up. Or put another way, we'll just spend our way out of it or we'll revenue our way out of it. That's what we'll do.”

The Soul of the Sport: Why Profit Isn’t the Goal

“This show is at its best when it isn't its most profitable. This show, which we have control over, we think is at its best when it doesn't look like a NASCAR. When we turn down profit opportunities and revenue stream opportunities, could make a ton more money with it. A ton more money. We don't because in the interest of creating a product that is at its best, sometimes you got to say no to that sort of thing.”