latimes
The College Football Playoff is set to undergo a major expansion, doubling its field to 24 teams beginning next year. This move signals the end of a three-decade tradition of conference title games, which had long been among the most anticipated events on the college football calendar.
College administrators unveiled the new format on Monday after ESPN agreed to modify its existing contract to accommodate the 11 additional games. While financial terms were not disclosed, ESPN confirmed a five-year agreement worth an additional $1.7 billion, supplementing the $7.8 billion deal that extends through the 2031 season.
The revenue from these new games is expected to offset the estimated $345 million value of the Power Four conference championship games. ESPN reportedly will not be responsible for $140 million of the extra money due to the cancellation of those title games.
Under the new structure, five automatic qualifiers will be granted: the champions of the Power Four conferences and the highest-ranked team from the Group of Six conferences. The remaining 19 teams will be chosen by a selection committee. Notre Dame, which currently receives a guarantee if ranked in the top 12 for the final year of the 12-team format, will not have any such guarantee in the expanded playoff.
The Big Ten was a leading proponent of the 24-team field, and USC coach Lincoln Riley has been a vocal advocate for the format. The change appears to benefit Power Four coaches who face pressure to secure one of the 12 playoff spots, but the consequences of missing a 24-team field could be equally daunting.
"When you get a room of 50 coaches or whatever we have in this conference together, it's hard to get everybody to be unanimous on something," Riley said earlier this season. "This is something where our room has been unanimous."
The Rose Bowl's postseason role remains unchanged, retaining its rotation as either a quarterfinal or semifinal host. The top eight seeds will receive first-round byes, and the playoff will commence on the second weekend of December, with the first two rounds played on campus sites. The traditional Army-Navy game will be contested on the first weekend of December, a slot previously reserved for conference title games.
The Southeastern and Big Ten conferences, whose approval was necessary for the change, along with their Power Four counterparts—the Big 12 and Atlantic Coast Conference—are betting that most of the additional spots will go to their members. This would give some second-tier teams new incentive to continue spending heavily in the era of name, image, and likeness deals and $50 million football rosters.
"Opening the playoff to more programs, more student-athletes and more fan bases across the country is great for college football," said Mississippi State president Mark Keenum, chair of the CFP board. "We look forward to seeing this expanded format come to life next season."
The first championship game for the 24-team playoff is scheduled for Jan. 24, 2028, in New Orleans. Traditional bowl games will continue to host the quarterfinal and semifinal rounds.
As part of the expansion, the CFP is requiring Power Four teams to play at least 10 qualifying regular-season games against conference opponents, other Power Four teams, and Notre Dame. Group of Six teams must play 10 games against conference opponents and a mix of G6 teams, Notre Dame, and other independents. The agreement guarantees two off weeks during a regular season that will begin the week before Labor Day.
The move to 24 teams represents the second expansion of the playoff since its inception in 2014 as a four-team event. After it grew to 12 teams in 2024, most observers believed it would eventually max out at 16, which was the SEC's preference. However, the Big Ten pushed for a larger field, while the SEC resisted, concerned about its conference title game—a property it created in 1992 and monetized for decades—and the marketability of games featuring third- and fourth-place finishers in power conferences. ESPN resolved the financial hurdle.
Now the question is whether fans will embrace an NFL-style free-for-all that could include about one-third of the Power Four's 68 teams, depending on the Group of Six schools, whose influence in these big-money power grabs seems to diminish with each move.
This is the latest seismic shift for a sport that for decades built its distinct character and generated controversy by relying on media and coaching polls to award national titles. The new system won't be a completely clean break. Critics see a risk in giving more power to a selection committee that hasn't really mastered the four- or 12-team brackets. The exclusion of Florida State in 2003 and Notre Dame last season stand out as prime examples—and the first rankings release of this season left people scratching their heads again.
Skeptics also view the expanded playoff as another watering-down of what's largely seen as one of the most important regular seasons in sports, replacing potential matchups like Alabama and Georgia in an SEC title game with a 13 seed vs. 20 seed game that could pit, say, Kentucky and South Carolina.
But as Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti argued from the beginning, a postseason that gives bubble teams hope and keeps others vying for home-field advantage or byes will bring more eyes—not fewer—to the end of a regular season that sometimes boils down to only three or four traditional rivalry games with meaning. (One of those traditional games, Ohio State-Michigan, is shaping up to have zero impact on this year's playoffs.) More at-large berths also help the conferences cash in on the decision to expand their league schedules (the SEC didn't really want to) and demand more non-league games be played among Power Four teams—all in an effort to beef up strength-of-schedule ratings that will carry weight with a selection committee.
Pells writes for the Associated Press.
Originally reported by latimes.