Imagine that: Big Ten coaches already want even more College Football Playoff expansion

Imagine that: Big Ten coaches already want even more College Football Playoff expansion

NCAAF College Football News, Photos, Stats, Scores, Schedule & Videos...

Imagine that: Big Ten coaches already want even more College Football Playoff expansion
Big Ten logo

Imagine that: Big Ten coaches already want even more College Football Playoff expansion originally appeared on The Sporting News.
Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here.

College football spent years fighting over playoff expansion. Now, less than two full seasons into the 12-team era, some of the sport’s most powerful voices already want even more.

During the Big Ten Conference spring meetings in California, coaches across the league continued publicly backing a massive jump from 12 playoff teams to 24. The push has quickly become one of the biggest stories hanging over the future of college football.

And honestly, it is difficult not to step back and laugh a little at how quickly the sport moved the goalposts again. For years, fans heard arguments that four teams were enough. Then 12 became the answer. Now, before the 12-team model has even fully settled into the sport’s identity, coaches are openly lobbying for a format that would include nearly one-fifth of the entire FBS.

Welcome to modern college football, where expansion apparently never ends.

Big Ten coaches believe bigger playoff means bigger relevance

The most fascinating part of the discussion is that Big Ten coaches genuinely seem united behind the idea. P.J. Fleck said there is “tremendous steam and power” behind the 24-team concept among league coaches, while Ryan Day pushed for a dramatically altered calendar that would move the season earlier and end the playoff much sooner.

Meanwhile, Jedd Fisch openly argued the Big Ten’s recent football dominance has not received enough national attention compared to SEC-heavy narratives. The timing of the push is not accidental.

The Big Ten enters 2026 riding enormous momentum after multiple national championship appearances and major postseason success. Programs like Michigan Wolverines football, Ohio State Buckeyes football, Indiana Hoosiers football and Washington Huskies football have all helped strengthen the league’s argument that more playoff access benefits conferences outside the SEC bubble. And from a pure business standpoint, the logic is obvious.

MORE: Michigan football coach Kyle Whittingham’s replacement breaks silence on Wolverines raiding Utah

More playoff spots create more meaningful late-season games, more television inventory, more national relevance for more programs, and most importantly, more money. That last part is the engine driving almost every major decision in college athletics right now.

The sport risks turning the regular season into something completely different

But there is also a growing concern quietly sitting underneath all of this. At what point does expansion fundamentally damage what made college football unique in the first place? Part of the sport’s magic historically came from the pressure of every Saturday mattering. One upset could derail an entire national championship dream. Rivalry games carried massive weight because the margin for error barely existed.

A 24-team playoff changes that dynamic dramatically. Two-loss teams? Probably safe. Three-loss teams? Possibly alive. Massive November games? They still matter, but not in the same life-or-death way college football traditionally operated. And that is before even getting into the scheduling complications.

The proposed model could require eliminating conference championship games, moving the season start earlier, and reshaping the calendar entirely just to fit the additional playoff rounds. Ironically, college football finally got the expanded playoff fans spent years demanding, and now some of the sport’s most influential figures are already acting like it still is not enough.

Which raises the obvious question. If 24 eventually happens, how long until somebody asks for 32?

More college football news: 

More at NCAAF College Football News, Photos, Stats, Scores, Schedule & Videos