Everyone Is Wrong About the 24-Team College Football Playoff
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Rarely in our polarized environment, with all of us in our information silos, is it possible to achieve unity on one single issue.
The idea of the College Football Playoff potentially expanding to 24 teams has turned into a moment when people from all walks of life appear to be alike.
Everyone has it wrong.
The media takes, to the fan understanding, to the conferences, networks, powers-that-be – everyone. No one has the right handle on this attempt at a solution in search of a problem.
America, let me help you out here.
What Everyone Gets Wrong About a 24-Team College Football Playoff
The big conferences, with the Big Ten currently the driving force, are pushing for the College Football Playoff to go from the 12-team format to 24 teams.
More playoff games, more revenue, more exposure, more potential fun, more, more, more.
And this isn’t sitting well with, well, almost everyone – and that includes me.
To be clear, I’m not a fan of the 24-team idea.
However, I’m annoyed at the reaction and arguments from people who should know better about how this all works.
I’ll get into the solution in a moment, but 24 is way too bloated and unnecessary – I’m not going to lose my mind over it, though. So if I occasionally sound like an apologist for the CFP – I used to work with them when it first started – no, I’m not.
Here’s every side, every angle, and what’s really happening to try clearing this up.
What Is the Proposed 24-Team College Football Playoff, Exactly?
This hasn’t all been hammered out yet – it’s still in the proposal phase to get to 24 teams, and the tweaks would soon follow.
To keep this basic, the College Football Playoff committee would announce its final top 25 rankings, as it does now.
The top 24 teams would be in, and there would likely be a way to carve out spots for the ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, SEC champions, and at least one guaranteed spot for an American, Conference USA, MAC, Mountain West, Pac-12, or Sun Belt school – the No. 24 team might get pushed out.
But this is where it gets tricky. Part of expanding to 24 would be to eliminate conference championship games, so the concept of a true champion would be murky.
How Did College Football Get to This Point?
The College Football Playoff idea worked.
From the beginning of college football in 1869 until 1997, national champions were largely determined by loose speculation and opinion.
Historians named national champions up until the AP Poll arrived in 1936, and eventually, we got to the brutally flawed Bowl and Poll national title era.
The BCS was created in 1998, combining the polls with several computer formulas to determine the top two teams to play in the national championship.
The system had way too many glitches, but it created a structure for what became the four-team College Football Playoff in 2014.
For the most part, the CFP was solid, but there was one glaring flaw – it was totally reliant on a panel of judges. There needed to be a path for teams to play their way in and lessen the opinion factor.
This led to the expansion to 12 teams in 2024, with automatic bids for the five top-ranked champions and seven at-large spots.
At the same time, the sport exploded with change – expansion, realignment, the transfer portal, astronomical coaching salaries, NIL, wars over media rights – that led to the Big Ten and SEC becoming even more powerful.
The two major conferences wanted more of their teams in, and the nudge for 24 teams became a hard shove.
The Biggest Arguments Against Expansion Fall Apart Fast
Not surprisingly, college football purists and most major media types instantly objected to the 24-team idea. Most have the right sentiment, but the wrong beefs.
“The best regular season in sports will no longer matter.”
Even at 24 teams, currently – more teams are added to the mix each year – just 17% of all schools playing FBS football would get in.
That’s still the lowest percentage of all the major American sports when it comes to making the respective postseasons.
– NCAA Men’s Basketball (21%, with the new expansion)
– MLB (40%)
– NFL (44%)
– NHL (50%)
– NBA (67% … yes, the play-in games are playoff games)
“Rivalry games are dead!”
Not only is this never, ever true – anyone who covers college football should know this – but it’s also way overblown.
Yeah, Michigan-Ohio State and Auburn-Alabama might not have quite the same urgency, but this leads into the one big thing that gets lost …
Most fans are casuals.
Yes, it’s more gripping when life is over for the loser of the massive late-November rivalry game, but we college football media types live and breathe in a far smaller bubble than it seems.
Fans just want to be entertained on a Saturday afternoon.
Only one team wins the College Football Playoff. Beating your rival – ask Ohio State fans when the 2024 team won it all, but lost to Michigan along the way – is always a big deal.
“A 24-team playoff will ruin college football.”
Again, college football is generally framed the wrong way.
It’s show business. That’s all. We’re in the entertainment industry.
A 24-team format means more fan bases are involved. There’s more interest, more excitement, and more on the line throughout the season.
Going back to the Poll and Bowl days, if you lost the opening game of the season, your national championship dream was almost always effectively over in the first week of September.
Even worse, if you weren’t a preseason No. 1 or No. 2 team, there was absolutely nothing you could do if the top two ran the table.
Now, getting into the College Football Playoff becomes a more accessible goal for fan bases outside of the traditional superpowers.
November is far more entertaining for more schools. That goes up big-time with a 24-team format.
The Reality Everyone Refuses to Admit About a 24-Team Playoff
You’re going to watch.
Again, I’m not a fan of a 24-team idea, but it’s more college football with more at stake.
We will have our rivalry games and our weekly twists and turns, but we’ll also get more big games to care about in December.
Think of it this way. Instead of mid-level bowl games with friends and families in the stands, they’ll be playoff showdowns.
Who Actually Wants a 24-Team College Football Playoff?
The Big Ten is the driving force. It has 18 schools, most of the massive media markets, and it wants more opportunities for its teams to be in.
USC and Michigan would’ve been in a 24-team CFP last year, and Iowa would’ve been on the cusp.
The ACC is on board, too, along with the American Football Coaches Association – coaches of big schools like the idea of having some wiggle room to lose.
Who also wants an expanded 24-team playoff? Notre Dame. If the Irish go 10-2 every year, they’re in, and 9-3 might get it done, too.
The Positives to a 24-Team Playoff
Along with the expanded interest from more fan bases, two gigantic positives are lost in all the bluster and whining.
No more conference championship games.
They’re the Blockbuster Video of sports. There was a time when they were everything within the system, but they don’t quite work now with bigger conferences and unbalanced schedules.
Too many times, they’re repeat matchups of regular-season games, or even worse, disastrous.
Georgia lost starting quarterback Carson Beck for the season in the 2024 SEC Championship win over Texas, and last year, there was a brief moment when Indiana quarterback Fernando Mendoza appeared to be hurt after getting rocked early against Ohio State.
And then there’s the other part to this – it can be a positive to not play in these games. Better to get the extra time off, rest up, and not get anyone hurt.
The second huge plus would be the shift in postseason attention.
Everyone says they love bowl games until they have to watch them.
There will always be a place for the lower-level bowl games between teams looking to keep the party going a little bit longer, but the mid-level bowl structure is suffering a painful death.
With the transfer portal, all of the opt-outs, and teams refusing bowl invites – remember, schools usually lose money on these things – too many times, the teams in the non-CFP bowls are just uniforms.
Turn those bowls into expanded College Football Playoff games, and they become a part of the solution.
Who Loses If the College Football Playoff Expands to 24 Teams?
Here’s the funky part. Depending on how it’s formatted, no one really loses, but this comes with one key caveat.
There has to be space carved out for at least two Group of Six teams.
Tulane would’ve been in last year no matter what – it was ranked 20th in the final CFP rankings – and James Madison would’ve been in at 24.
This can’t just be a field of 24 loaded with Big Ten and SEC teams.
Even if the top teams outside of the Power Four get rocked right away, okay. All they want is a shot.
The Best College Football Playoff Format Is Obvious
If you really wanted to do this right, here’s how it’s done.
To address all the concerns – the regular season importance, the rivalry games, keeping the playoff from being bloated, making the stakes for every game even higher – this is the answer, and no one will want to do it.
Eight teams.
The champions from the ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, and SEC are in – which means you have to keep the conference championships.
Two champions from the Group of Six conferences are in, too, along with one wild-card for Notre Dame, or that 12-0 SEC or Big Ten powerhouse that slipped in a conference title game upset.
(But, if you can’t win your conference, why do you deserve a chance to play for the national title?)
Of course, this idea will never, ever happen. Not in the modern world of college athletics. So let’s try this.
If 24 is too big, and 12 doesn’t quite sit right, 16 would be the compromise, with four teams in a play-in game to get to a 12-team bracket.
For example, last year, BYU would’ve hosted Tulane, Notre Dame would’ve hosted James Madison, and then we almost certainly would’ve had Notre Dame at Oregon and BYU at Ole Miss in a far stronger 12-team tournament than what we got.
I was once told college football couldn’t have a playoff because “changing the bowl system would hurt the troops.” (True bizarre story that includes an interview with Yoko Ono – that’s for another time.)
College football got through depressions, world wars, the crazy BCS snubbing of USC in 2003, the Oklahoma/Texas meltdown of 2008, the nightmare of all things 2020, and the insanity of 2023, when 13-0 Florida State was left out – correctly, by the way, but that’s for another day, too.
College football has been through it all, and now we’re almost certainly going to get to 24.
And everything will be okay.
Related: What’s Next in College Football Realignment and Conference Expansion?
This story was originally published by College Football News on May 20, 2026, where it first appeared in the College Football section. Add College Football News as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
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