When college football leaders met in August to discuss next year’s potential changes to the College Football Playoff’s format, the conference picture was simply too murky to make any decisions.

CFP executive director Bill Hancock said they needed to “wait until the dust settles.”

Since then, the ACC has added Cal, Stanford, and SMU, leaving just two Pac-12 remnants in Oregon State and Washington State — and an overwhelming sense that the Power 5 layout was shrinking to a Power 4.