The college football playoff, which recently expanded to 12 teams, resumes tonight.

And unprecedented money is pouring in. ESPN is reportedly paying more than $1.3 billion to televise these games.

And some players are now receiving millions. William Brangham talks with sports journalist Pablo Torre, who hosts the podcast Pablo Torre finds out

about a brave new world for college football.

Pablo Torre is so good to have you on the news hour. So imagine some of our audience has not

been paying attention to all of this, and they're now waking up and seeing this new

playoff structure in college athletics.

What is going on there? What was the rationale for this and how has it been playing out so far?

Yeah, if you've been hibernating, welcome to the new age of college football. It's very strange in some key ways,

but also flowing from a logic that I think is fairly ancient within the sport. When it comes

to the playoff system specifically, which is that the most valuable property in televised sports

in general has always been playoff games. And so when it comes to college football, the most

valuable of all of the college sports, it's always been logical that more games, expansion to 12 teams, it's more football.

And America's demand for football, William is inelastic.

That remains true.

And so this is just yet more profit, yet more billions of dollars accruing to a sport that

is also grappling simultaneously with how much to give those to the players

that actually comprise the product.

And that is the other big shift that is going on here, this is what's called name image likeness,

where college players, after this being considered a taboo forever in college football,

now those players are getting enormous sums of money. How did that

changeover happen? Yeah, it's a half measure, but it is radical because of that ideology,

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