Mark Emmert, the NCAA's loquacious new president, has announced that he would be happy to help college football stage a playoff:
"If the leadership of those universities ... want to move in that direction, then the NCAA knows how to run championships and we'd be happy to help," Emmert said while speaking at the Rotary Club of Baton Rouge, of which he was a member while serving as LSU's chancellor from 1999 to 2004.
Of course the NCAA would be interested in helping. The largest revenue stream for the NCAA, as in the actual organization itself, each year is the TV contract for the men's basketball tournament. The money payouts from the bowls go straight to the conferences who then distribute it to schools. The TV contracts for the football regular season are also done with the conferences.
Realistically, this does nothing to put college football any further down the road towards a playoff. The decision would have to come from university presidents, not the NCAA. But hey, at least we now know that the NCAA would be willing to take a cut of the proceeds if need be.