Thursday's college football: Pac-12 miffed at missing playoff
New York — A Pac-12 team has made the College Football Playoff just twice in six seasons and none of the last three.
If anyone should be leading the charge toward expanding the current four-team model, you would think it would be Pac-12 Commissioner Larry Scott.
“I completely get that it would really release the pressure of being the one that’s been on the outside looking the most in the first six years to say that automatically we’ve got our champion (in),’’ Scott said Thursday. “But we also have agreements through 2026 (the championship game) that I think will be very challenging for us to all agree how we’re going to amend and change.”
Scott, in New York for a forum on college athletics sponsored by Sports Business Journal, said while changes to the playoff are already being discussed behind the scenes, being halfway through the current 12-year television rights contract with ESPN means there is no urgency.
“I’ve tended to see in my 10 years here these things don’t change until they have to,” Scott said.
Last year at this time, speculation about playoff expansion was the loudest it has been since this postseason format was implemented in 2014. The Big Ten having its champion left out for a second consecutive season had Commissioner Jim Delany and coaches and athletic directors in that conference grumbling publicly about the selection process.
The university presidents who oversee the playoff released a statement the day of last season’s national championship game that tamped down the chatter, saying it was “way too soon’’ to know if expansion was even a possibility.
This year, the four teams for the playoff fell into place without controversy after Utah lost the Pac-12 title game to Oregon. That left the Pac-12 as the only Power Five league with a champion that had lost more than one game.
“The committee’s gotten a little luck,” Scott said.
Scott called getting left out of the playoff “painful.”
‘’And this year, to be the one league of the five that doesn’t have a team in it, that’s harmful to our positioning, our brand and everything we’ve got,” he said. “First and foremost, we’ve got to be better. And we’re engaged in: Is there a better mousetrap going forward?’’
Extra point
New Florida State football coach Mike Norvell will earn $4 million this season with annual bonuses during the rest of his six-year deal, according to a contract obtained by the Tampa Bay Times.
The 25-page document was released by FSU on Thursday after a public-records request. It’s significantly more detailed than the initial letter of agreement between the Seminoles and Norvell’s predecessor, Willie Taggart.
Norvell’s base salary is $215,000, but other compensation boosts it to $3.75 million for the first year. His contract also calls for annual retention bonuses of $250,000 every Dec. 1.