The debate for the future of the College Football Playoff continues with growing support for a 24-team tournament.
The future of college football is up for debate — always and in all ways these days but most primarily concerning the College Football Playoff format.
Last season, the CFP expanded from four teams to 12. The expansion allowed more college programs to compete for the national championship and, in theory, was supposed to ward off controversy about deserving teams feeling snubbed.
After just one season of an expanded playoff bracket, with louder controversy than ever after Notre Dame’s exclusion last year, the conversation is to now whether to double the amount of teams in the field.
While the proposal would further open the playoff field and spotlight to more teams and give fans even greater postseason entertainment value, there is the fear this could dilute the regular season and devalue the product as a whole with conference championships being terminated.
Was a four-team playoff too exclusive? Yes, but the CFP selection committee isn’t always a perfect arbiter, even with 12 spots to fill, and as last season seemingly made clear it’s impossible to satisfy everyone in the end.
So why expand?
Ultimately the decision comes down to the two biggest conferences in college football — the SEC and Big Ten. With the debate for a 24-team field underway for some time now, the sport’s power brokers couldn’t agree on a firm expansion commitment in January and still publicly disagree on the best path forward.
The Big Ten is aggressively pushing for the 24-team format, with its commissioner Tony Petitti saying after conference’s spring meetings, “We’ve had zero conversation about 16 [playoff teams].”
SEC commissioner Greg Sankey, meanwhile, reiterated that his conference prefers a 16-team model. However, there is a lack of clarity over how many of the league’s schools actually feel this way individually.
Ultimately, it seems inevitable an expansion is happening — it’s only a question of when and how many?
The Case For a 24-Team College Football Playoff
Less Controversy
The four-team format was fraught from the beginning.
During its first season, 2014, 11-1 co-Big 12 champs Baylor and TCU were left out. In 2015, a talent-loaded 12-1 Ohio State team was excluded because it didn’t make the Big Ten championship game. In 2017, upstart UCF, then part of the AAC, went undefeated and got shutout of the playoff field.
But the four-team format truly felt doomed the minute undefeated Florida State — a 13-0 power conference champion from the ACC — was left out of the 2023 playoff field (primarily due to starting quarterback Jordan Travis’ season-ending injury).
But it took only one year of the 12-team format to find yet more controversy when 10-2 Notre Dame was excluded in favor of 10-2 Miami despite being slotted ahead of the Hurricanes in every CFP ranking released before the final one. (Miami had narrowly defeated Notre Dame in Week 1, a factor that became a growing pressure point for the selection committee in the final weeks of deliberations).
As ACC commissioner Jim Phillips said last month, “It’s been very consistent in what I’ve indicated. … When you’re leaving national championship-contending teams out of the playoff, you don’t have the right number.”
A 24-team field should significantly reduce controversy and let the results on the field dictate the ultimate outcome rather than the committee weighing so many similar season resumes.
It could also create more opportunities for programs/conferences that may have been overlooked in previous years, though the prominent backlash over both Tulane and James Madison out of the Group of Five making the 2025 playoff field undercuts that notion a bit.
To reiterate, the power conferences (namely the SEC and Big Ten) are in control and their motives for expansion are purely to ensure that more of their own teams make the playoff.
Let’s be honest — there will continue to be debate and dissatisfaction no matter where the cutoff line is drawn.
With the latest proposed 24-team format, there would be no automatic qualifiers except for one spot reserved for one team from the Group of Six (as it’s now known with the Pac-12’s return). The top eight teams in the final CFP rankings would receive first-round byes. The first and second rounds would take place on college campuses.
Less Program Opt-Outs
With an expansion, there is the automatic assumption that programs would no longer feel the need to opt out of bowl games.
Last season, Notre Dame opted out of the Pop-Tarts Bowl after the selection committee kept the Fighting Irish off the 12-team playoff bracket.
Notre Dame wasn’t the only program to back out, but it faced no penalty due to not being in a conference.
Kansas State and Iowa State both opted out of bowl invitations and were fined $500,000 each by the Big 12, but would an expanded playoff field have changed that? Both made their decisions related to coaching changes and preferring to focus on building a new staff and recruiting.
The tradition of bowl games has started to die, and it will continue to get worse regardless.
Players decide to sit out due to their NFL projections and wanting to avoid injury, which is understandable. However, when one of the sport’s biggest brands opts like Notre Dame opts out, that becomes a broader issue.
Perhaps, at least the motives that drove that move could be curbed with the larger playoff field.
A More Meaningful Regular Season?
While the thin margin for error and immense importance attached to every game on the schedule is the very thing that makes the college football season unique and special, supporters argue that expanding the CFP field could actually strengthen the importance of the regular season.
Under the four-team model, dozens of programs were effectively eliminated by October. With the 12-team bracket, a much greater number of “bubble” teams were still very much in contention until the final weeks. With a 24-team field, that effect would be even greater.
Could it also help keep more marquee non-conference showdowns on the schedule?
USC and Notre Dame halted their historic rivalry series entering 2026 in part because the Trojans questioned the value of playing an extra daunting game on top of their Big Ten schedule when three losses likely meant doom for any playoff hopes.
Other coaches, notably including Texas’ Steve Sarkisian, have questioned how the committee evaluates results from teams that take on major out-of-conference matchups (Texas has Ohio State, Michigan and Notre Dame on the schedule in the coming years) vs. teams that schedule easy wins.
“There’s a team in our state in another conference with a schedule that I would argue if I played with our twos and threes, we could go undefeated, and they’ll probably make the CFP this year,” Sarkisian said, targeting Texas Tech.
A larger playoff field allows more leeway for teams who take on those spotlight non-conference games — there’s no debate about that.
The Case Against A 24-Team College Football Playoff
While a 24-team playoff format sounds great for avid college football fans, the saying “less is more” holds some merit here as well.
The SEC’s official stance on a 16-team format over 24 playoff teams largely comes down to the contention that only the very best teams — you know, the ones who play a grueling SEC schedule week after week, and sure, some Big Ten teams — deserve to play for the national title.
“If you look at the entirety of our league, we are by far the most competitive, the strongest football league by far,” Sankey said.
A larger playoff could simply result in more SEC and Big Ten teams qualifying each year, giving those programs even greater exposure and recruiting advantages.
Instead of helping smaller schools close the gap, expansion could further widen it.
The End Of Conference Championship Games
Athletic directors and conference commissioners have a right to question this proposal when a proper financial model hasn’t been introduced. Expansion almost certainly means no more conference championship games.
CBS Sports’ Brandon Marcello reported that the power conferences would lose “more than $200 million combined” by eliminating conference championship games and that would need to be recouped from additional CFP revenue.
More than money would be lost, though, by doing away with conference title games.
Those games used to really mean something, the stakes were real (beyond just postseason implications) and the matchups were great theater for fans.
Regular Season Impact
For decades, college football’s greatest strength has been that every Saturday matters.
A single loss could derail championship aspirations. Rivalry games, conference matchups and especially late-season showdowns carried enormous weight because there was so little room for error. With 24 playoff spots available, elite programs could absorb multiple losses and still comfortably qualify.
That’s already happened with the 12-team model, and doubling the field further dilutes the stakes week to week — that’s just reality.
During the recent SEC Spring Meetings, Texas A&M coach Mike Elko jokingly took aim at what he believes are misguided intentions from some supporters of playoff expansion.
“What does Mike Elko want? 40 [teams]. Then I won’t get fired,” he joked before making a bolder point. “It’s OK to make it hard to get to the playoff. … None of us are answering for the good of the sport. We’re answering for the good of ourselves.”
Oklahoma coach Brent Venables said much of the same.
“If you want to be in complete, total control, win your games. It worked in our favor in November, where we had a really challenging last four games, and we took care of business. And that ultimately was a separator for us to be able to get into the playoff, where had we not done that, had we not gone 4-0, we probably didn’t deserve to be in. I’m good with that,” he said.
Expanding access may not only benefit teams that take a third SEC loss (like Texas last year) but could also reward teams that have not faced comparable competition — the crux of the SEC wanting to cap expansion at 16 teams. (Just enough to get a couple more of its teams in the field without inviting the depths of the ACC, Big 12, etc.)
What A 24-Team Playoff Would Have Looked Like Last Season
One of the biggest and most basic arguments in favor of expansion is that more teams deserve an opportunity to compete for a national championship.
If the College Football Playoff had expanded to 24 teams last season, theoretically every team but one ranked in the final CFP Top 25 would have received an invitation. (North Texas was No. 25 and would have surely been the one cut.)
Under a 24-team model, the SEC would have had the most teams in the field last year. Georgia, Ole Miss, Texas A&M, Oklahoma and Alabama made it as is, but No. 13 Texas and No. 14 Vanderbilt would have been locks as well in an expanded bracket. Four-loss Tennessee and Missouri teams might have at least been on the fringe of the committee’s debate as well.
The Big Ten also would have been well represented. Indiana, Ohio State and Oregon made the playoff, while No. 16 USC, No. 18 Michigan and No. 23 Iowa would have likely made it in as well, giving the conference at least six playoff teams. Four-loss Washington might have at least been in consideration too.
With college football’s two strongest conferences combining for at least 13 participants in this hypothetical, it underscores the point that the biggest beneficiaries of expansion are the ones driving it.
But it also would have meant Notre Dame’s inclusion, of course, as well as the Big 12’s BYU, Utah and potentially Arizona and Houston, and the ACC’s Virginia and Georgia Tech. Both leagues got only representative in the 12-team field.
It was a confluence of circumstances that led to two Group of Five teams making the playoff last year as the ACC found a way to shut itself out of the five automatic bids reserved for the highest-ranked conference champions. With unranked 8-5 Duke winning the ACC, the champions from the Sun Belt (James Madison) and AAC (Tulane) slipped in ahead.
That loophole has already been closed for 2026 with the four power conference champions now given automatic playoff berths regardless of ranking and one spot reserved for the highest-ranked Group of Six team (league champion or otherwise).
It’s possible a 24-team field increases the chances for multiple Group of Six teams making it year to year, but there’s no guarantee.
Again, the sport’s aptly named power conferences are driving this — and not altruistically.
Perhaps the most intriguing question in all of this, though, is whether a 24-team field will truly produce more upsets.
Last season, Notre Dame, Texas, Vanderbilt, Utah, USC, etc., all would have entered the playoff with an opportunity to challenge higher-seeded opponents — and potentially shake up the whole field.
Ultimately, a hypothetical 24-team field highlights the central debate surrounding playoff expansion.
Supporters see increased access, more meaningful postseason games and potentially further opportunities for smaller programs. Opponents see a playoff field dominated even further by the SEC and Big Ten with a diminished regular season.
Both sides may have a point.
Final Verdict: Is 24 Too Many?
The reality is that there is no perfect number.
The four-team model excluded too many deserving programs. The 12-team format was supposed to be the solution but instead found much of the same controversy in the end. A 24-team field would surely limit any viable debate that a legitimate national title contender was excluded, but it raises other concerns about preserving the value of the regular season, conference championships and what makes college football so great.
Whether fans support or oppose expansion, one thing is clear: college football’s postseason is likely far from settled and the debate over the future of the CFP is only beginning.
