Matt Drinkall rips 24-team College Football Playoff

A reporter asked a MAC coach about playoff expansion. Most guys say something polite and move on. Drinkall didn't.

Ross Dellenger

@RossDellenger

An evisceration of CFP expansion from CMU coach Matt Drinkall, who says college football is on a "downward spiral" toward a "dumpster fire" and that executives will "prostitute" the sport for financial gain until "people stop caring, just like they did with boxing in the 20s."

By the Belt: A MAC Sports Blog

@bythebelt

Here is (part) of Central Michigan head coach Matt Drinkall's quote in opposition to the proposed 24-team College Football Playoff: t.co/SzcEQiRg3D

Look at who's talking. Central Michigan is exactly the kind of program a 24-team bracket is supposed to help. Doubling the field gives a Group of 5 team more ways in than it has ever had. Drinkall, in his 2nd year in Mount Pleasant, looked at that bigger door and said he still doesn't want it. In the clip he says nobody in charge has ever asked what any of this looks like 15 years from now, that "everything since COVID has just been 100 percent reaction," and that "none of it's in the best interest of the student-athlete."

The deal he's mad about is close to done. The CFP and ESPN are finishing a plan to go to 24 teams starting in 2027, only 3 seasons into the 12-team format. The top 8 seeds get byes, seeds 9-24 play on campus in mid-December, and the winners play the top 8 on campus late in the month before the bowl rotation takes over in the quarterfinals. The kicker is that conference championship games go away completely.

And the money isn't even that big. ESPN is reportedly paying around $350 million a year extra, but once you take out the roughly $225 million the conferences lose by killing their title games, the net gain is about $125 million. People involved have called it close to net zero. SEC commissioner Greg Sankey, Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti and Notre Dame AD Pete Bevacqua ran the talks with ESPN. That's who Drinkall means when he says the people in charge only care about "what makes my job the most amount of money right now."

The national writers who cover this every day noticed fast. The quotes went around because a sitting head coach saying this out loud basically never happens.

Nicole Auerbach

@NicoleAuerbach

This is a worthwhile rant from CMU coach Matt Drinkall about the state of college football:

By the Belt: A MAC Sports Blog

@bythebelt

Here is (part) of Central Michigan head coach Matt Drinkall's quote in opposition to the proposed 24-team College Football Playoff: t.co/SzcEQiRg3D

The best line is the Dr. Seuss one. Drinkall compared the sport to the Truffula trees in The Lorax, chopped down for every last cent until nothing is left. Add the boxing comparison, where the sport gets milked until "people stop caring," and you get a guy who thinks the bigger bracket is a symptom, not a fix. Whether you agree or not, he's saying what plenty of fans already grumble about. Conference title games are gone, the calendar is a mess and the regular season matters less every year.

Next, watch whether anyone else joins him. Power 4 coaches have mostly gone along with expansion or pitched even bigger formats. If more Group of 5 coaches, or anyone with real pull, start saying this in public, the people who run the sport will at least have to answer it. If not, Drinkall goes down as the guy who said it first and the deal goes through anyway.