Bowl Season Execs Don't Want Campus Sites Used for College Football Playoff Games

Bowl Season executives aren't keen on having College Football Playoff games held at college campuses in the future, according to ESPN's Heather Dinich. 

College football leaders received a letter earlier this week, which was obtained by Dinich, requesting that any future playoff games in a possible expansion model be played at bowl sites instead of on college campuses. 

Bowl Season executive director Nick Carparelli and chairman Mark Neville sent the letter in response to discussions about expanding the playoff beyond the four-team model. 

In the letter, the executives said they believe playing games away from college campuses provides a "neutral, competitively fair setting."

"To exclude Bowl games from any round of an expanded playoff would be harmful to Bowl Season, individual Bowls and their host communities, and post-season college football in general," the letter said. 

The CFP management committee has proposed a 12-team model that doesn't include guarantees for conference champions. The bracket would consist of the six highest-ranked conference champions and the six remaining highest-ranked teams, which are determined by the CFP selection committee. 

The top four conference champions would receive a first-round bye, while the other eight teams would play the opening round on the higher seed's campus, which executives believe isn't competitively fair. 

"We know that the commissioners are going to make these final decisions, and we would never intrude on that," Carparelli told ESPN. "However, we look at postseason college football as having two components: the playoff component and bowl season. And they're both equally important, and they really work together a lot of ways. So we think we can add a lot of value to the conversation and maybe come up with solutions that the commissioners would not have contemplated or maybe would have never thought that the bowl system could handle."

The playoff is in the eighth season of a 12-year contract that runs through 2025. However, the format could be changed as soon as 2023, Dinich previously noted. 

The CFP has been in operation since 2014. The four teams that play in the postseason are determined and seeded by a 13-member committee. Since the current model began, Alabama has the most championships (three) and most playoff wins (eight).