Wednesday has been a busy day in for the NCAA, which announced that conference would be free to do what format they feel is best for their conference title games. In corresponding with the news, the Pac-12 immediately announced that it will be doing away with its format for the North Division winner facing the South Division winner in the conference title game. It will instead switch to being the teams with the best winning percentage that will face off in the title game starting this upcoming season.
However, the Pac-12 will not be doing away with the division and changing the schedules for the 2022 season.
“Our goal is to place our two best teams in our Pac-12 Football Championship Game, which we believe will provide our conference with the best opportunity to optimize CFP invitations and ultimately win national championships,” said Pac-12 Commissioner George Kliavkoff. “Today’s decision is an important step towards that goal and immediately increases both fan interest in, and the media value of, our Football Championship Game.”
By doing this, the Pac-12 hopes to eliminate situations that we have seen in the past where the two best teams aren't in the title game. This scenario has happened five times since the start of the Pac-12 title game that started in 2011. Most recently, during the 2020 season No. 13 USC faced Washington instead of facing No. 25 Colorado who had the second best record I the conference.
There is more though, the NCAA is meeting today and has tentatively decided on removing the scholarship limit for college football that teams are allotted use during each recruiting cycle for the next two years. That currently sits at 25 scholarships per class. Though not finalized, the NCAA will do away with the 25-scholarship limit for recruiting and make it whatever number the schools need to fill out their 85 man roster in the upcoming two academic years. So essentially there will be no cap on how many scholarships a school could give out during a recruiting cycle as long as they don't go over 85 in the 2023 and 2024 recruiting years.
I know there is a lot going on here, so if you have any questions feel free to ask myself or Matt and we will answer them.
