| 23 February 2012
Forget about all of the talk of SEC dominance. No doubt, the other conferences would like to shed the
image of being the SEC's whipping boy in the BCSNCG in each year but the real motivation behind the sudden change of heart is money.
When ABC won the broadcast rights to the first eight years of the BCS (1998-2005), it paid $550 million. No doubt, that's a hefty sum.
But according to a source on CBSSports.com, implementing a four-team playoff format could potentially make the annual payday nearly that much. It could be worth upward of $500 million per season. (emphasis added)
The thinking is that ESPN, for example, doles out about $100 million for each NFL game that it broadcasts. Those are regular-season games, and while those run-of-the-mill games have become must-see TV in this NFL-crazed country, they are still regular-season games.
You have to think that the interest in a college football playoff game would be as great.
Or greater.
Networks would shell out big bucks for those rights. It'd be new. It'd be fresh. It'd be a recipe for a multiyear TV deal in the billions of dollars.
And that doesn't even account for the additional profit from the tickets sold to those two extra games.
All of that money, of course, would be divided among the conferences, and that's something every league administrator can support. Sure, the SEC may have to agree to change a system that has been so good to them. Yes, the Big Ten and Pac-12 may have to forgo their idea for on-campus games.
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