Rakes Report #287: The Mysterious Case of Pete Bevacqua and the Playoff Expansion Switch 'Em Up 🧐

Last week, the ACC, Big 12 and Notre Dame all announced their support for expanding the FBS playoff to 24 teams from its current 12. This is a change from their previous position against sextupling the size of the field over a five-year span, including from Fighting Irish athletic director Pete Bevacqua, who had called the idea of a 16-team bracket “perfect” in December.

It’s a frustrating about-face — we discussed the perils of the 24-team playoff in January while laying out the danger of Tony Petitti’s continued powerbroker role in the sport — and also quite confusing because very little has changed publicly in that time. The one major alteration is the Powers That Be decided they’re expanding the NCAA basketball tournaments, a thing I believe not a single normal fan asked for or wants. It would be one thing if all of these changes were because of a legitimate groundswell, but the people who’ve made the bad decisions to get us here are making more seemingly bad decisions that go against the explicit wishes of the people buying their product.

Bevacqua spoke to The Athletic’s Pete Sampson about this and made the case for 24 teams (calling it the “best solution”) but didn’t really explain what new information inspired the dramatic shift during that conversation. The important thing to put on the table before we begin is we know there are behind-the-scenes machinations going on that we simply don’t have access to, because despite the proliferation of eyes emoji in the sports’ coverage, seismic events like the Texas and Oklahoma move to the SEC or Southern Cal and UCLA killing the Pac-12 so they could play more games with Rutgers happened with no forewarning.

I do not have access to all the cards being played so while I can theorize I unfortunately cannot end this with a grand reveal a la Holmes, Poirot, Fletcher, Blanc or any of our other great detectives. But I do have three theories: One that makes sense for Notre Dame, one that makes sense for the ACC and Big 12, and one that makes sense for all three entities. They aren't mutually exclusive, so the big reveal could be like in Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express or Wes Craven’s Scream (broad spoilers for five-star masterpieces that are nine- and three-decades old, respectively).

We’ll sift through Bevacqua’s quotes to attempt to both get to the bottom of this change and further emphasize why a 24-team playoff is a terrible idea. We need to do a full FJM on the initial passage but here it is in full first.

“I think in this day and age with what universities are investing in football, it’s a very expensive sport. You need to give more teams hope,” Bevacqua told The Athletic. “The way things are structured now, everything points to the CFP. It’s a measure of success. It’s important in the tenure of a coach. We’ve seen firings when teams aren’t going to make it to the CFP. And my concern is that if more teams aren’t given hope, that universities over the course of the next five, 10 years will say, ‘Hey, is the investment worth it?’

“And I would hate to see a college football landscape where there’s only a handful of teams that can really give it a legitimate go year after year after year.”

Okay, got it? Let’s take a walk.

“I think in this day and age with what universities are investing in football, it’s a very expensive sport. You need to give more teams hope.”

I’m not sure what can give more teams hope than one of the worst programs in the history of the sport coming off a national championship? In the two 12-team playoff years (notably occurring alongside the transfer portal and NIL) we’ve also seen a number of schools have their best seasons in decades if not ever: Notre Dame, Miami, Penn State, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, Ole Miss, Arizona State. Go back to the final year of the four-team and you can add Michigan* and Washington to that list.

I’m sure there are some teams that feel like true competitiveness is further away than it was previously because their university and donor base can simply not invest at the level needed to compete, but those teams were never in play for football national titles anyway.

“The way things are structured now, everything points to the CFP. It’s a measure of success.”

One of the things that frustrates me most about our current era broadly is people referring to things that are the results of choices and decisions as being inevitable or just the way things are. Bevacqua had nothing to do with the current playoff format or conference realignment, nor can he snap his fingers and change what fans care about, but it’s always galling when a person in power uses the passive voice to describe something that is neither set in stone nor a mandate of heaven.

“It’s important in the tenure of a coach. We’ve seen firings when teams aren’t going to make it to the CFP. “

The American Football Coaches Association voted earlier this month to support a 24-team playoff and between that and Bevacqua’s quote it is troubling to me that anyone involved in this sport thinks if you lower the bar all the way to the 25th best team barely missing the playoff that there won’t be firings just because you made the field of two dozen. That’s crazy, man. You’ll obviously have coaches fired if they barely make the playoff field multiple years in a row and don’t advance, especially if some of those results are lopsided. You’ll have more coaches on playoff teams leaving for other jobs -- remember how fun that was with Lane when the entirety of Thanksgiving weekend coverage was dedicated to him? Multiply that.

You also could have a situation where the cut line being moved back from 12 to 24 gets more coaches fired, because now teams consistently finishing in the 30th to 45th range that historically have never considered themselves playoff contenders might think “Well hey, we’re just a few spots away from being in the bracket, why not get a guy who can get that final jump?”

“And my concern is that if more teams aren’t given hope, that universities over the course of the next five, 10 years will say, ‘Hey, is the investment worth it?’”

It is a fair concern that if the gap widens you will have teams who effectively give up on football and become very bad, but I also don’t think teams that usually finish with five or six wins finishing with three or four wins really changes the game that much. If you’re worried about this happening over the next decade, must we rush into an expansion that will never, ever be rolled back and only further expanded? Also, if you want to make this sport more equitable on the whole, perhaps the money could be distributed more evenly? Maybe schools can stop paying coaches eight figures per year with comically one-sided buyouts, or putting big money toward facilities? I am not the first person to point out that this is an industry with a spending problem, not a revenue problem.

“And I would hate to see a college football landscape where there’s only a handful of teams that can really give it a legitimate go year after year after year.”

This is basically how college football has always been and as I cited above, way more teams have hope than if you scan through the tops of the historical polls. If you want a league with parity, the NFL is right there.

Let’s hop down to a different section because this is where we get to the heart of my first theory.

CFP expansion would make the return of Notre Dame-USC easier, as Bevacqua sees it. And that’s another reason why he likes a 24-team field after being in the 16-team camp a year ago. Expansion could quiet college coaches’ saber-rattling about canceling marquee nonconference games.

That’s Bevacqua’s counterargument to the idea that CFP expansion would devalue the regular season. If expansion makes regular-season losses less punitive, Bevacqua believes more programs would be willing to take on bigger games. And for an independent football program that needs more than its guaranteed five ACC games to build a functional schedule, that willingness would be critical to maintaining a football schedule good enough to get the Irish into the CFP and interesting enough to satisfy the sport’s media partners, never mind the fans buying tickets.

My question here: Are you sure? I was among those who thought that expanding to a dozen entrants would mean teams would now have some wiggle room to schedule more interesting games. That was an incorrect assumption because much of the sport has veered the other way, trying to engineer a schedule that gets you to the playoff versus trying to prove you’re good against other good teams while playing games that are fun to watch.

If you believe that seeding and byes in a giant tournament will matter, are you 100% certain teams won’t just keep doing what they’re doing? Then you’ll have a regular season that matters way less overall without games that are meaningfully better on paper, and the few big games you have will be devalued because everyone knows the loser is still fine for their ultimate aspirations.

You could say “The regular season is going to matter less, so ticket interest will dip, so you’ll need to schedule more marquee matchups to get fans into the stadium,” but if you’re saying that, shouldn’t you try to stop the train before the beginning of that sentence versus trying to find a solution for a problem you’re actively choosing to make? You could also change the selection process so the schedule engineering is punished while the field stays at 12 or 16. At least try that before you expand, because this isn’t going to get smaller.

Okay, final piece before the drawn out reveal of Theory One:

While Bevacqua pushed back on the idea that Notre Dame faces a scheduling crunch as the Power 4 leagues line up their nine-game conference schedules, he acknowledged expansion would be a release valve for the pressure to build adequate future slates.

I believe the Occam’s razor Theory One is that Notre Dame is having legitimate trouble filling out its schedule, and instead of publicly saying this —which would do no good even if the whisper and rumor network around the sport would mean everyone doing the scheduling is already well aware — Bevacqua is trying to inspire courage in potential opponents by easing the pressure of the best regular season in American sports. Despite the public embracing, maybe Notre Dame is eyeing an exit from the ACC deal and needs to find a way to get November games. A 24-team playoff doesn’t hurt the Fighting Irish’s pursuit of a championship (more on that below) and also might make Bevacqua’s life easier in scheduling, so that could be a net positive for the athletic department.

The counter to that would be asking exactly how much harder is the scheduling. While a lot of awesome non-conference series have been tragically canceled over the past year, Notre Dame’s future dates with Texas, Alabama, Florida and Indiana remain secure. This is where our lack of information hurts, because Bevacqua would know if one or more are teetering, especially if the Buckeyes win in Austin come September and the Longhorns have a full-on breakdown.

The Irish just announced a home-and-home series with Auburn with a game in October, which came when the Tigers had full knowledge they’d be playing a nine-game SEC slate. They were able to put together a game with BYU (a team that’s gone 23-4 and finished in the Top 15 of the AP poll twice over the last two years) quickly and the long-term Clemson series is locked in (well, they can’t all be winners). If you want a sign of the potential benefits of playing Notre Dame, the North Carolina Tar Heels are charging $250 a ticket for the game in October despite/because of being projected to fall short of a bowl.

I’m sure it’s more difficult to put a schedule together as an independent with athletic departments across the nation whining and exposing their yellow bellies, but this is an instance where the degree of difficulty matters. Has Notre Dame explored a formal deal with the Big 12 for a branded (Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark loves branding) Big 12-Notre Dame November Challenge? An SEC Shamrock Series in Nashville or Atlanta? If the job of putting together a good schedule is impossible, that’s one thing. If it’s just harder, that’s what the money is for. And again, are you sure that going to 24 means others will find their courage?

(Bevacqua specifically mentioned in The Athletic section above that expanding to 24 would “make the return of Notre Dame-USC easier.” I really hope Theory 1.5 isn’t making this change just to smooth things over with Jen Cohen and Lincoln Riley.)

Theory Two of why the ACC and Big 12 support this is they were taking a surprisingly selfless position as far as number of their teams that made the field and have reversed course, either because they feel it’s inevitable and want to attempt to strike good terms and/or due to pressure from member institutions that want that “hope” Bevacqua talked about of being the No. 22 seed and losing by three touchdowns in the first round. Our friend Jamie Uyeyama pointed out last week that if you only go to 16, that would have really favored the SEC getting more teams the last few years. Our friend Sam Werner pointed out on the podcast when we discussed this last week that things change so much in this sport that might not always be the case and you shouldn’t do a giant structural overhaul based on those numbers. These are both good points worth considering.

It hasn’t even been a full year since those two leagues’ previous renouncement of a 24-team playoff but it’s not like financials are getting any better between non-revenue sports teetering and private equity deals being floated. More playoff games means more of your teams in the playoff which means potential for a short-term cash bump. What does that mean for the long-term health of the sport? Well, that’s a bridge to cross another time.

Theory Three of why the ACC, Big 12 and Notre Dame all support mega-expansion is there is even more movement toward a superleague built around the Big Ten and SEC than we realize and this is the best way to appease the two behemoths of the sport and throw sand in the gears of the move that would truly turn our beloved into NFL Lite. If the option is a 24-team playoff or a 60ish-team super league, I’ll take the former every time, even if the Fighting Irish would 100% have a ticket into the latter.

This is of course an unnecessary choice, because no deity has come down from on high and presented these as the only two options to decide between or else an apocalypse is rendered unto us. Just like the original sin of conference realignment never had to happen, neither of these two options has to happen either. The 12-team playoff is working pretty well so let’s just let it simmer a bit longer.

This whole exercise has made me zero in on what I want in a college football postseason format that also keeps the regular season important, and I’ve landed on this two-part rubric:

1) If a team wins all its games (or even almost all its games in some instances), it should have a chance at the national title: This eliminates a two-team playoff and in a lot of years a four-team playoff (undefeated Central Florida, Cincinnati and Florida State teams were left out of the field). But there were other teams left out that it would have been fun to see. 2023 Georgia was 12-0 and on a 29-game winning streak before they lost the SEC title game to Alabama (a playoff participant). 2021 Notre Dame was 11-1 with its only loss coming to a playoff participant. I think it’s fine that those teams didn’t make it — hey, don’t lose your game against the playoff participant and you take their place — but I also think their inclusion into a larger field wouldn’t have been any kind of great stain on the sport.

2) The schools left out should be very good teams that feel pain and regret at their losses: Obviously Notre Dame fans can’t relate to this. But it’s good BYU fans have to steam over being unable to split their pair with Texas Tech, and Texas rues their loss at a Florida team that fired its coach, and Vanderbilt feels the sting of missed opportunities in Tuscaloosa, and and so on and so forth. The losses hurting means the wins feel better! That’s the point of this. Conversely, the cutline for a 24-team playoff last year would have been somewhere in the middle of Georgia Tech, Missouri, Tennessee, Houston, Iowa, Navy and UNLV.

There is a case for a 24-team playoff that Notre Dame fans will hear that sounds solid: Hey, they’ll get rid of conference championship games and streamline the calendar so we aren’t ending in February, and every good Notre Dame team will automatically be in the playoff, and the really good ones will have byes and/or home games, and that’s money, and that’s good. On top of that, scheduling will probably —but not certainly! — be easier. It’s not a terrible deal on its face if you’re viewing this exclusively through a Fighting Irish lens.

However, if the regular season becomes “We’re playing for seeding and to avoid having a disaster where we fall out of the Top 24,” that doesn’t seem that fun? Knowing that a chunk of perennial powers are basically guaranteed spots (good look at how that would have played out since 1998 here) when the season starts would drain so much of the drama and shift all the stakes to the playoff, greatly condensing the theater and putting it up against the holidays, the NFL home stretch/playoffs and the early going of the regular seasons for NBA, NHL and college hoops. Everything would be about the postseason, which hasn’t been what this sport has traditionally been about and there’s no reason to change that just because it might mean a few more bucks.

The appeal of every halfway decent Notre Dame team being in the field without breaking a sweat reminds me of one of my favorite The Twilight Zone episodes, “A Nice Place to Visit” (spoilers for a nearly seven-decade old episode of television): A career criminal named Rocky is killed during a robbery and finds himself in the afterlife under the guidance of a man in a white suit named Pip who gives him everything he wants. Rocky has all the beautiful dames, incredible meals, and infinite money, wins at every casino game, cannot lose at pool and knows that if he tries to rob a bank he’ll succeed, which takes all of the fun and thrill out of trying to rob a bank, especially when you already have infinite money.

Bored out of and slowly losing his mind, Rocky tells Pip there’s been a mistake, saying, “Look, look, I don’t belong in heaven, see? I wanna go to the other place.” Pip replies, “Heaven? Whatever gave you the idea you were in heaven, Mr. Valentine? This is the other place.” King Rod Serling1 ends the episode’s narration with “A scared, angry little man who never got a break. Now he has everything he’s ever wanted -- and he’s going to have to live with it for eternity…in The Twilight Zone.”

“Be careful what you wish for” is a well-trod warning, but that’s for a reason. Maybe I’m miscalculating this entire idea but it feels like “We made the playoff!” loses quite a bit of appeal if every above average team gets to claim the same.

We’ve gone long as has been tradition lately but wanted to shout out our former Report guest and Notre Dame’s career leader in blocks and rebounds Brianna Turner for her work in saving the WNBA season (without her, Perfect Basketball Player Sonia Citron wouldn’t be primed to get MVP votes in her sophomore campaign). Loved this excerpt from ESPN’s deep dive on the league’s contract negotiations:

Turner brought up a litany of concerns over teams not providing housing, from safety to accessibility for international players to housing discrimination Black and brown people can face. Engelbert later acknowledged she did not realize how strongly players felt about the issue until deep into negotiations.

Turner became a crucial figure in the final days: She describes herself as “absolutely not into numbers,” but her degree from Notre Dame in graphic design came in handy to make charts that compared salaries as a percentage of the cap in the past CBA with what was now being proposed.

The salary cap had to be at least $7 million, she realized, or the max salaries would take up too much of the cap for the midlevel and minimum players to fit under it. It looked so simple once she used graphics and spreadsheets to explain it to everyone -- but after months of crunching numbers it was hard to see anything as clearly as Turner finally did. Everyone started calling her “Hidden Figures,” referencing the 2016 movie starring Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer and Janelle Monáe as three Black female mathematicians who played key roles in the space race during the 1960s.

“Hidden Figures” is a genuinely hilarious nickname. After she wrapped up assisting in labor negotiations, she wrote an op-ed supporting trans athletes. One of one. Good luck to her, Jackie Young and Jewell Loyd in bringing another title to Vegas this fall.

That’s it. Thank you so much for reading. Merch here if you need some summer fits. We’ll have a big podcast (Spotify) (Apple) all about actual football in a few days for your holiday weekend listening so keep an eye out for that. Until then and until next time, take care of yourselves and each other.