The Rose Bowl has signed an agreement with the College Football Playoff, paving the way for the event to expand to 12 teams beginning in 2024, sources confirm to CBS Sports. The CFP had given the Rose Bowl no later than the end of the week to agree to terms the Bowl had previously refused to accept.
With the Rose Bowl now in the wings, a formal announcement of a 12-team playoff to be held in 2024 and 2025 is expected shortly. The new format was originally agreed by the CFP Board in September.
Although the terms of the agreement signed by the Rose Bowl are not yet known, the Bowl had requested that its game be played in its traditional 5:00 p.m. ET time slot on January 1, although the playoff expansion may affect the Bowl schedule. This slot is considered one of the most valuable in sports television. The agreement signed by the Rose Bowl likely creates significantly more flexibility in this planning process.
In an extended playoff, the games themselves are more important than the bowls in which the competitions take place. The Rose Bowl’s refusal to agree to a more unified scheduling policy would have delayed expansion until 2026, after the CFP’s current deal with ESPN ends. That would have cost the parties involved an estimated $450 million in additional revenue and potentially kept the Rose Bowl out of the selection process once a new contract was signed.
The Rose Bowl had proposed hosting CFP quarterfinals in 2024 and 2025 — possibly without their traditional Big Ten and Pac-12 partners — in exchange for maintaining its timeslot as part of the CFP’s new media rights deal beginning in 2026, a source close to the situation said CBS Sports. This offer was declined.
When asked what impact the Rose Bowl had in that process, one person involved in the CFP process simply replied, “They don’t have one.” A CFP Bowl official said an early expansion is after the conference championship games this weekend been impossible amid the onslaught of bowl and playoff seasons.
The CFP is in the ninth year of a 12-year deal with ESPN that expires after the 2025 season. All required parties except the Rose Bowl had already agreed to expand to 12 teams for the 2024 and 2025 seasons. The 10 FBS conferences, Notre Dame and the participating New Year’s Six Bowls agreed on issues such as playing at campus locations, game dates and revenue distribution for early expansion. However, the agreement on early expansion had to be reached unanimously.
Over the years, every BCS/CFP scheduling decision – until now – has ensured the Rose Bowl could broadcast its game at its preferred 5:00 p.m. timeslot on or around New Year’s Day. The game is traditionally scheduled to follow the Tournament of Roses of Parade. The timing was such that the sun always set in the west over the San Gabriel Mountains throughout the game, creating one of the most iconic backdrops in American esports.
As the CFP poised to expand, its handlers became less tolerant of the Rose Bowl’s demands. The 5 p.m. time slot will be too valuable going forward when – for the first time – there is a sense that the games are more important than the bowl sites.
“It’s the equivalent of Super Bowl Sunday,” an industry source said of the 5 p.m. timeslot. “New Year’s is like a Sunday, even if it’s not a Sunday. Everyone is hungover from New Year’s Eve. You sit back, it’s 5 o’clock. Everyone is done with what they have to do. It’s the best window there is.”
The primary reasons for early expansion are to give teams more access to the playoffs and to earn an additional $450 million per year from rights holder ESPN so it can air the additional CFP games in 2024 and 2025. A new media rights deal must be signed for 2026 and beyond.
It was not clear what influence the Rose Bowl believed it had in the negotiations. This broadcast window is valuable, and CFP stakeholders were fed up with accommodating the Rose Bowl in an arrangement that dates back nearly a quarter of a century.
The Rose Bowl began relinquishing its exclusivity in 1998, the first year of BCS. It was then that an agreement was reached to end a continuous run that stretched back to 1947 with the Big Ten and Pac-12 champions. In the BCS agreement, the Rose Bowl alternately gave up its two courts every four years to host the BCS championship game. That first happened after the 2001 season when Miami beat Nebraska for their last national title. Both schools mentioned at the time that after 55 consecutive years of Big Ten vs. Pac-8/10, they should feel like underdogs.
When the CFP began in 2014, assurances were given that the Rose Bowl would never host a national championship. Los Angeles was building the new SoFi Stadium, and the city of Pasadena didn’t have the resources to outbid the city of LA. SoFi will host the 2023 CFP National Championship. Meanwhile, since 2014, the Rose Bowl has hosted the CFP Semifinals in 2015, 2018 and 2021.
“The shine of this game is fading [if the Rose doesn’t agree]”said a bowl executive outside of the CFP system. Maybe the Rose Bowl just needs to cave in, suck it up. It’s just who blinks first.”
On Wednesday night, the Rose Bowl blinked.