Michael Wilbon calls out Fox and ESPN over ‘heinous’ 24-team College Football Playoff
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As the College Football Playoff moves towards expanding to 24 teams, Michael Wilbon believes it’s just a money grab that puts young athletes in danger.
Wilbon is consistent. He’s ranted against the NCAA men’s basketball tournament expanding, calling it a money grab. He’s ranted against the NFL for expanding its schedule while claiming they care about player safety. And now Wilbon is taking both arguments and using them against college football as it considers expanding its playoff from 12 to 24 teams.
“This is about ESPN/ABC and Fox, this is about some turf wars going on there with conference affiliations…nobody should want 24, nobody. We hear all this nonsense about health and safety, what hypocrisy” – Michael Wilbon on CFP expansion pic.twitter.com/onq7hwwNXP
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) May 21, 2026
“More and more and more just can be glutenous, it doesn’t have to be better,” Wilbon ranted Thursday morning on First Take. “There are not 24 teams worthy of a playoff. There are not 16 teams worthy of a playoff! I’m not sure every year there are 12. There just aren’t. We know what this is, it’s a money grab…It’s all of the people in the television industry. This is about ESPN/ABC and Fox; this is about some turf wars going on there with conference affiliations. The ACC doesn’t really want it, might have to go along with it. The SEC doesn’t want it. nobody should want 24, nobody.”
“We hear all this nonsense about health and safety, what hypocrisy,” Wilbon continued. “Health and safety? So you want to add maybe as many as five games to a college schedule? I haven’t even gotten to the part yet about the great thing about college football is the scarcity of product. 12 games is enough…now you’re gonna go to maybe as many as 18 games? And you talk about health and safety. You want to add that kind of physicality to a college schedule…It is heinous to try to put a 24-team playoff out there for college football.”
The most interesting part of Wilbon’s rant was his openness about the turf wars between ESPN and Fox as he argued against ESPN’s expansion. While most sports fans are usually in the camp that more football is better, ESPN personalities have been out in full force against playoff expansion in recent weeks.
Wilbon called it “heinous,” Kevin Clark called it a “disgrace,” Rece Davis said it was “preposterous,” Paul Finebaum dubbed it “utterly ridiculous,” and Mike Greenberg ranted about it being the end of college football “as we know it.”
The idea of expanding to 24 teams has been widely criticized. But when do you see a group of sports opinionists from ESPN feel this unanimous about a topic? There’s no football fan at ESPN who wants more football? Everyone at ESPN just happens to think more big games would be a disaster for college football?
ESPN is certainly against more college football playoff games. Because currently, ESPN has a sort of monopoly on the College Football Playoff. But once they expand to 24 teams, it opens the pool for Fox to air some of those games on its network.
For Wilbon, the ‘less is more’ sentiment is consistent. He doesn’t want more college basketball, more pro football, or more college football. Maybe everyone at ESPN genuinely feels the same way. But credit Wilbon for at least citing the turf wars between ESPN and Fox.
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