College football has been going through a series of major shifts in recent years, but nothing compares to the incredible amount of change in 2024. Because it’s hard to remember it all, and because the season is coming up quickly, here is a recap of all the large moves that are happening this year.
New Conference Alignments
I debated what to put first to deem the biggest change. Conference realignment won out because we’ve seen the first major conference blow up in 30 years.
The oldest move now finally happening is that of Oklahoma and Texas coming to the SEC. The move was first announced what seems like forever ago in July of 2021. The time is finally here.
In 2022, USC and UCLA announced moves to the Big Ten for 2024. Those are finally happening too.
But it was around this time last year as the Pac-12 ran out of good options for a new TV deal that all hell broke loose. First, Colorado chose to go back to the Big 12 in late July. About a week later at the beginning of August, Oregon and Washington blew up the conference by rejecting a last-minute rights contract and choosing to join the Trojans and Bruins in the Big Ten.
Utah, Arizona, and Arizona State left for the Big 12 soon after, and eventually the ACC added Stanford, Cal, and SMU. The shell of the Pac-12 still remains with only Oregon State and Washington State in it, but the teams that left will still play in P12-affiliated bowls the next two seasons because of contracts. Will the Pac-2 eventually merge with the Mountain West to keep the brand around? Stay tuned.
The Power 5 is no more. Is it now Power 4? The Core 4? The Big 2, meaning the SEC and Big Ten, with the Big 12 and ACC the middle and the G5 the lower tier? We’re still working out the nomenclature, but the old vision of four major superconferences with at least 16 teams each is finally here. For now.
The 12-Team Playoff
Time was, an expansion to the postseason format would’ve been the top change with a bullet. Welcome to 2024.
The selection committee is still going to decide the participants. The five highest-ranked conference champions all will get automatic bids to the bracket. Because of the above, this means at least one team from the Group of Five non-power conferences will get a spot. The seven highest-ranked teams aside from those league champs will take up the rest of the slots. The bracket will be set at the beginning, so there won’t be any re-seeding.
The four highest-ranked conference champs will get the top four seeds and a first-round bye. The first round will consist of the 5-12, 6-11, 7-10, and 8-9 seed games, with seeds 5 through 8 hosting the games. They can choose to host on campus or at some other site, but presumably all of them that have an on-campus stadium will want the game there.
The former New Year’s Six bowls take it from there. The Sugar, Rose, Peach, and Fiesta Bowls will host the second-round games based on the old tie-ins and seeding. The CFP website gives the following example: “if the Sugar Bowl hosts a Playoff Quarterfinal and the SEC champion is ranked No. 1 and the Big 12 champion is ranked No. 3, the SEC champion would be assigned to the Sugar Bowl and the Big 12 champion would be assigned elsewhere.” The 1-seed will play the 8-9 game winner, the 2-seed will get the 7-10 winner, the 3-seed will see the 6-11 winner, and the 4-seed will face the 5-12 winner.
The semifinals will consist of a game between the winners of the quarterfinals with the 1-seed and 4-seed and another game between the winners of the quarterfinals with the 2-seed and 3-seed. They will be played at the Orange and Cotton Bowls with the highest seed getting preference between them. The title game is at the Falcons’ stadium in Atlanta.
Rule Changes
College football is taking some pages from the NFL this year. Certain designated players will be able to have radios in their helmets to talk with coaches until the play clock hits 15 seconds to go. Quarterbacks and middle linebackers are likely to be the ones with those. Teams will also be able to use tablets on the sideline and during halftime, just like the pro league.
The college game will also get a two-minute warning at the end of each half. Teams will still get their same number of timeouts, but these baked-in clock stoppages will help keep a close game exciting towards the end of second and fourth quarters.
SEC on ABC
The 3:30 SEC game of the week will be on a different channel for the first time in a long time. CBS had a steal of a deal dating back to a contract from back when Tim Tebow still starred in the Swamp, and it refused to pay a cent more to extend it early. That gave Disney/ABC/ESPN the chance to make a competitive bid, and the league went with that offer while CBS went off to sign up with the Big Ten.
The fanfare will still be around, but now it’ll be used for games up north. The SEC will be even more of a business partner with the Mouse instead. It will result in more scheduling certainty earlier in the year, but it does feel like a loss even though we would’ve finally got a chance to hear a season without Gary Danielson gushing over Nick Saban every ten minutes.
NIL Comes Into the Building
Ever since college athletes could start cashing in on their NIL rights in 2021, schools officially had to stay out of it. Everyone had to live by this fiction where NIL was just for athletes to make some walking-around money by doing sponsored social media posts and ads for local businesses, and in that setup schools had no reason to get involved.
In reality, NIL quickly became pay-for-play arranged through third parties with some dollar figures reaching as high as seven figures in a few rare cases. Were the third parties run well by people who knew what they were doing? Maybe, maybe not. Did players get good representation? Sometimes yes, sometimes no.
It was always a mess, one that could’ve been helped by the schools themselves getting in on the process. They have people who can vet agents, or who can tell if contracts are good deals, or who can judge if a prospective NIL partner has the cash or not.
As of August 1, schools can do just that. Players aren’t obligated to use their schools’ help, but most of them probably should. Some order might finally arrive in the NIL wild west.
House Payments, Coming Soon
Earlier this year, the NCAA and the power conferences announced a settlement in House v. NCAA over revenue sharing. The details still have to be approved by the court, and there are a few other legal details I’m not going to get into here, but the case has a massive financial impact.
The NCAA and schools owe massive amounts of money in damages for five years’ worth of players not being able to earn based on their NIL rights (2016-21). They will also have to share revenue to the tune of $20-22 million per year with current athletes. Will Title IX apply to these payments? That, and some other issues are still up in the air.
Which is to say, these payments probably aren’t going to start going out this calendar year. However, they loom over the sport like a large storm cloud. Every athletic program has already started working out how it will live in this new environment with the House payments eating up a huge chunk of their revenues. Some are already changing their spending.
The results of this settlement aren’t solely a 2024 story, but none of these major changes are anyway. These will all reverberate for many years to come.