Dellenger: ESPN and CFP are ‘close’ to 24-team playoff deal, contrary to other reports

On Friday, College Football Playoff leadership, which comprises the 10 FBS conference commissioners plus Notre Dame AD Pete Bevacqua, sent a formal proposal on a 24-team playoff to ESPN for review. ESPN now has five business days to respond to the proposal, and if no deal is reached, the CFP can bring rights to the expanded postseason to the open market, where other networks can bid on the inventory.

Several reports have characterized it as unlikely that ESPN and CFP leadership will reach a deal prior to the conclusion of the network's five-day consideration period, and a report in Sports Business Journal earlier this month described negotiations between the two sides as "tough sledding."

But one college football insider believes a deal is closer than reports are letting on.

On a recent episode of the College Football Enquirer podcast , Yahoo Sports college football reporter Ross Dellenger, who has been at the forefront of the playoff expansion story, suggested that ESPN and the CFP are quite close to a deal, although it's still quite possible the CFP tests the open market for due diligence purposes.

"There were some things that came out last week that sort of portrayed it that they're not close [to a deal], I think they're close. I think ESPN and the CFP are close on a deal," Dellenger said. "That doesn't mean the CFP is just going to agree to one, because why would you not go to the open market and just see what's out there?"

ESPN has a few built-in advantages when it comes to landing a deal for the expanded playoff. For one, they have this exclusive negotiating window with the CFP, and the two sides have been afforded time to hammer out intricacies of a 24-team playoff format that other networks have not gotten. Secondly, ESPN can put the money it currently allocates towards conference championship games, which will be eliminated in a 24-team playoff format, directly towards the cost of the expanded playoff. In total, reports estimate that ESPN allocates about $200 million per year for conference championship games, with much of that value being derived from the SEC and ACC title matchups.

"I think it's going to be really hard for any other network to get close to ESPN's offer because ESPN already has $200 million invested in the conference championship games, so they got kind of a head start," Dellenger explains.

And lastly, if CFP rights do hit the open market, ESPN has the opportunity to match any offer from a competing network should it get outbid.

Importantly, Dellenger notes that even if ESPN's five-day period expires and the two sides have not reached a deal, that does not mean CFP rights automatically go to the open market. The CFP and ESPN can, more or less, extend that period indefinitely if they're locked into negotiations, though Dellenger says there's an appetite by some in CFP leadership to test the open market just to see what offers an expanded playoff could attract. ESPN does, however, have a Dec. 1 deadline by which a deal would need to be done for expansion to be implemented next season.

Considering that one other prominent college football insider, The Athletic's Ralph Russo, expressed confidence that ESPN would be the sole home of a 24-team playoff , Dellenger's insistence that a deal is closer than other reports suggest isn't that crazy. Outside of Fox's initial push for 24 teams , which itself was partly a strategy to get rights onto the open market, there hasn't been a ton of interest from other networks about getting involved in CFP rights.

All signs seemingly point to ESPN as the frontrunner to keep all of the College Football Playoff. But how we get there is anyone's guess.