ESPN: CFP Issues Ultimatum to Tournament of Roses Over Rose Bowl Game’s Place in College Football Playoffs Expansion

According to ESPN, leaders of the College Football Playoff have issued an ultimatum to the Tournament of Roses.

According to the story, if the Tournament of Roses cannot come to terms with the CFP by Wednesday, the ‘Granddaddy of them All’ could be excluded from the playoff expansion and a media contract worth billions.

According to one source in the story, the CFP wants the Rose Bowl and hopes the game will be part of the expansion.

On Monday Pasadena Now reported that the tournament wants to keep its exclusive broadcast window at 2 p.m. on January 1 in years that it would also host a CFP semifinal.

According to the report, organizers of the game are willing to temporarily concede the traditional Big Ten vs. Pac-12 battles to host a quarterfinal game in 2024 and 2025.

If the CFP doesn’t expand in time for the 2024 season, it will lose roughly $450 million in potential gross revenue. There is mounting pressure to make a decision this week.

According to ESPN, the Rose Bowl Game is the last and most complicated issue preventing expansion. Organizers of the other five bowl games that have agreed to terms, but it is important to note that unlike the Cotton, Sugar, Fiesta, Orange and Peach bowl games, the Rose Bowl Game is tethered to a parade that garners millions of viewers on Jan. 1.

Traditionally the game starts 90 minutes after the end of the parade.

Pasadena Now reached out to Laura Farber, the chair of the Rose Bowl management committee for comment on Sunday, but Farber did not provide a quote on the issue.
ESPN reportedly spoke to someone involved with the game on Tuesday.

“We continue to have daily conversations with the CFP board of managers, and we remain hopeful we can come to an agreement,” a Rose Bowl spokesperson reportedly told ESPN on Tuesday.

Farber told ESPN in November the bowl was willing to be flexible.

“For anyone to say that the Rose Bowl Game is the sole reason right now that expansion may not happen before the current cycle runs out is categorically wrong,” Farber said. “Yes, we need to work through the details of our contract and our separate broadcast agreement, but we remain open to that.”

A source said the CFP has assured the Tournament of Roses it will do everything it can to work around the Jan. 1 2 p.m. slot, but has asked all of the bowls to take a “leap of faith.”

In September, the CFP unanimously voted to expand the CFP to 12 teams in 2026 but encouraged the sport’s commissioners to work to implement it as early as 2024. The original 12-team model, first made public in June 2021, includes the six highest-ranked conference champions and six at-large teams.

The rankings of the teams will continue to be determined by the CFP selection committee.

The four highest-ranked conference champions receive a first-round bye. Teams seeded five through 12 will play each other in the first round. The quarterfinals and semifinals will be played in bowl games on a rotating basis, and the championship game will be at a neutral site, as under the current four-team format.

But as the games rotate so will the dates of the bowl games which means the Rose Bowl Game may not be played on Jan. 1 some years.

“I don’t want it to just come down to the Rose Bowl as the reason we don’t start it early, I really don’t, but it may be,” a CFP source told ESPN. “We said this from Day 1 — there may be any number of reasons we can’t. We’re really down to one remaining issue.”

Pasadena Now has reached out to the Tournament of Roses for comment and will update this story as necessary.