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Expanding College Football Playoff not currently being considered, executive director Bill Hancock says

Dustin Schutte

By Dustin Schutte

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Don’t get your hopes up for an expanded College Football Playoff field this year, executive director Bill Hancock says that’s not really in the cards right now.

The 2020 college football season has been a major topic of conversation as the country deals with the COVID-19 pandemic. With the sport generating so much revenue and funding other collegiate sports and the majority of most athletic departments, finding a way to play the have the season is an important matter.

One of the proposed contingency plans has been to play a truncated season (in the fall or spring) with only conference games. If that were the case, there have been talks about expanding the College Football Playoff field to eight teams to potentially make up lost revenue.

Hancock says that’s really not an option — at least right now.

“I can just tell you that expansion of the playoff is not being considered,” Hancock told Paul Finebaum of SEC Network on Tuesday. “It’s not being considered, there hasn’t been any talk about it at all.”

While Hancock didn’t entirely rule out the scenario (just mostly), he said that it’s still too early to have a conversation about an expanded field for the upcoming season.

“It’s April. We just don’t know,” Hancock said. “As soon as we do know, believe me, we’ll set up in our office and get working on it. But the speculation has created so many possibilities, that it wouldn’t even be possible to respond to all of them or consider all of them, even if anybody wanted to. Believe me, when the time comes we’ll be all over this.”

The College Football Playoff is still taking a wait-and-see approach, but soon enough, decisions will have to be made. Many are expecting some sort of announcement by late May.

Dustin Schutte

Dustin grew up in the heart of Big Ten country and has been in sports media since 2010. He has been covering Big Ten football since 2014. You can follow him on Twitter: @SchutteCFB