The College Football Playoff will reveal its first team rankings of the expanded 12-team era Tuesday night, and chaos may not be far behind. 

Many fans could be confused—at least initially—by the intricate new system, which includes crucial new revenue opportunities for schools that reach the postseason bracket.

The New Format

Just like in previous years, the CFP selection committee will reveal its top 25 teams each Tuesday throughout the remainder of the season, culminating with the first 12-team Playoff bracket to be revealed on Dec. 8. But things won’t be as simple as just looking at the top 12 teams and moving on.

At the end of the season, the 12 participating CFP teams will be the five conference champions (in all likelihood the Power 4 champions and one Group of 5 champion) ranked highest, plus the next seven highest-ranked teams. The four highest-ranked conference champions will get first-round byes, even if one or multiple non-conference champions are ranked above them. That means multiple teams inside the top 12 could be left out of the CFP. There will be no re-seeding after the first round (the No. 1 seed will play the winner of the No. 8 vs. No. 9 matchup, etc.).

A Hidden Advantage?

Teams seeded fifth through eighth will host first-round Playoff games on campus in December. But the CFP will collect all revenue from ticket sales and redistribute it to the conferences, according to The Athletic. However, schools will get to keep the money made from other game-day revenue sources like concessions and parking. 

Bowl Season executive director Nick Carparelli previously told Front Office Sports that he would like to see all CFP matchups played at neutral-site bowl games, which will be the case from the quarterfinals on. The quarterfinals will be played in the Fiesta, Peach, Rose, and Sugar bowls.

Dollars and Cents

While debates will no doubt ensue about the best 12 teams on the field, there will be major financial implications off the field:

• Conferences will receive $4 million for each school that makes the CFP and for each school that qualifies for the quarterfinal. That’s an $8 million guarantee for the conferences with schools receiving first-round byes.
• Conferences will receive another $6 million for each school that reaches the semifinals and each school that plays in the national championship game.

In total, that’s $116 million distributed to conferences with teams in the CFP. Teams also get $3 million to cover expenses for each round. 

Ace Yankees pitcher Gerrit Cole is staying in pinstripes, but even bigger decisions await the high-profile and large-revenue MLB club. 

Cole, the 2023 American League Cy Young Award winner, and the Yankees agreed Monday to honor the terms of a nine-year contract that still had four seasons and $144 million left on it, according to industry sources and multiple reports. The 34-year-old Cole opted out of those remaining years on Saturday, as he had the right to do, and the Yankees could have nullified that move by adding another year at the same $36 million to his deal.

Instead, there may be future discussions about a potential revised contract that would guarantee Cole will finish his career in New York, though there are no active talks about an extension. As of now, the Yankees are set to spend at least $324 million in total on Cole, and perhaps more, after first signing him in late 2019. The latest decision, though, is as if Cole never opted out in the first place.

Cole performed well during the Yankees’ most recent run to the World Series, posting a 2.17 earned run average in five playoff starts. But his failure to cover first base on an infield hit during the fifth inning of Game 5 of the World Series opened the door for the Dodgers to seal their championship. 

What’s Next?

The Yankees now have more than $186 million in player payroll committed for the 2025 season and are pushing closer to the $241 million threshold for MLB’s competitive balance tax, commonly known as the luxury tax. 

That figure, however, could soar if the club retains free-agent outfielder Juan Soto, who is now poised to reap a contract worth more than $600 million, which would be the second-largest deal in U.S. pro sports history, and likely the largest by present-day value. 

At 5 p.m. ET Monday, all MLB free agents, including Soto, became eligible to sign with a new team, and the 26-year-old superstar has already heard expressions of interest from about a dozen clubs. A much smaller number, however, actually has the financial ability to take on a deal that large. The Yankees are one of those teams.

In one of the latest examples of media networks battling for bragging rights, Fox Corp. said it has sold out of its advertising inventory for Super Bowl LIX in February at “record pricing.” 

As part of its fiscal first-quarter earnings report Monday, the Fox Sports parent said its ad units are gone, more than three months before the game.

“We still have a pretty robust football calendar yet to come, culminating with our broadcast of Super Bowl LIX, where we are already sold out and at record pricing,” said Fox CEO and executive chair Lachlan Murdoch.

Fox’s claim of record pricing could be largely a matter of semantics. 

Specific figures have not been released, but sales activity around the game has surpassed a $7 million rate per 30 seconds. That pricing is largely in line with recent years across multiple networks—even as the NFL has assumed a dominant role in U.S. television, and Super Bowl LVIII this past February set an American broadcast record with an average audience of 123.4 million. When the final numbers come out, the price could just be pennies higher than last year—or it could be significantly higher. Either way, Fox gets to claim a record.

In 2023, when Fox last aired the Super Bowl, the network said it generated nearly $600 million in advertising revenue related to the game. CBS Sports parent company Paramount, which aired Super Bowl LVIII, then surpassed that mark, though by exactly how much is not known. 

The broader flattening of the Super Bowl ad market, even with the NFL’s unrivaled popularity, owes to several factors, including the effects of social media, additional buying requirements that most Super Bowl broadcasters impose on brands, and still-rising production costs.