There has been a lot of discussion recently that there is support from three of the four power conferences for a 24-team College Football Playoff format.
The Big Ten was first to introduce the idea, and the ACC and Big 12 have joined that support publicly in the last month. The SEC still wants a 16-team bracket with five automatic bids and 11 at-large teams.
The 12-team playoff has only been around for two seasons of college football, and we will get at least one more year of it after the 2026 season since the Big Ten and SEC couldn’t come to an agreement. But I think the 12-team format should be here to stay.
I do think there could be some work done to the seeding process, especially when it comes to two Group of Five teams making their way into the tournament, as Tulane and James Madison were able to do last season as the No. 11 and 12 seeds, respectively. However, we have seen over the last two years that 12 teams is exactly where the sport should stick.
The main reason I believe expansion has to stop is because the regular season will start to lose its meaning the more teams are let into the postseason. This has been a worry every time there has been expansion, but that didn’t end up being the case with either the four-team playoff or the 12-team playoff.
Had Notre Dame lost its first two games of the season — like it did last year against Miami and Texas A&M — the Fighting Irish wouldn’t have had much left to play for if their ultimate goal was a national championship. Of course, Notre Dame still won its next 10 games and didn’t get into the playoff, but it still went into each of those 10 games thinking they were playing for their season, and that’s how it felt watching those games.
Miami had some struggles throughout the regular season, but as we got into the home stretch with the CFP selection show approaching, each game the Hurricanes played in meant everything, in terms of its season. Miami went on to play in the national championship, even with two losses.
Even for the teams like Ohio State and Indiana, which were No. 1 and No. 2 and both undefeated going into the Big Ten championship, the regular season, and every game played before the CFP, still matters a ton. Whichever team won the Big Ten title was anointed the No. 1 seed and was placed in the Rose Bowl, ending up not having to play a streaking Hurricanes team.
That ended up mattering a lot to the Buckeyes, who lost in the Cotton Bowl, and to the Hoosiers, who blew out Alabama in Pasadena. Even the top teams have a lot to play for.
So now, with a 12-team playoff, about 15 teams — give or take a few — have a lot riding on every single game it plays.
Expand to 24 teams, and that’s no longer the case. At 24 teams, Ohio State, Georgia, Alabama, Oregon, all of the college football powerhouses, can rest their players throughout the season because, outside of a season in which they lose four-plus games, they will make it into a 24-team bracket and have a chance to compete for the national championship. In the NIL and transfer portal era, I don’t see those teams falling outside the top 25, and if they do, it won’t be for longer than one season.
Games for teams around that No. 15-30 area matter more, but would you rather watch a game that matters with the top few teams in college football, or a game that matters between North Texas and Navy? No offense to the great seasons from those two programs last year, but I know where I stand on that matter.
It was proven to us that the regular season matters when Texas was held out of the postseason field last year. The Longhorns were one of a few teams that were on the edge of CFP selection at the end of the season that had a real chance to compete for a national title. Miami and Notre Dame were the other two.
The Longhorns loss to Ohio State certainly hurt its chances of making it in, but it was a lapse against a poor Florida team that I would argue hurt their chances more than anything else.
The selection committee takes into account the level of team you’re playing against. Texas wasn’t punished for losing to the Buckeyes. It was punished for losing to a Florida team without a head coach.
Then, Notre Dame was left out of the bracket in favor of Miami. The two teams played each other in the first week of the regular season, with the Hurricanes coming out on top. Were both teams different versions of themselves than they were in Week 1 when they played? Almost certainly, but when it came down to two teams that actually suited up and battled it out on the gridiron, the victorious team was given the benefit of the doubt, and rightfully so.
Had the Irish made it into the tournament over Miami, there would be all kinds of different problems on our hands.
When the playoff was a four-team format, we were told the regular season didn’t matter in the last year of its existence. Florida State finished the 2023 season 12-0 and was left out of the bracket in favor of Alabama, which went on to lose to Michigan. If a team in a power conference can win every single game it plays and miss the postseason, the format is fundamentally broken.
The 12-team format is a perfect balance of both allowing the regular season to matter for every single game while still giving a good amount of teams the chance to compete for a national title. Expand to 24 teams and, in my opinion, you’re probably watching at least nine teams that don’t have a chance to win the whole thing, which dilutes the value of simply getting into the playoff, which should still be viewed as a major accomplishment with a 12-team format. Going to a 24-team format turns making the playoff into an expectation rather than an earned prize, which is how it should be viewed.
It’s almost certain that the 12-team format won’t last forever, but college football should be careful what it wishes for. The sport has gotten lucky in that it stumbled into the perfect format that rewards excellence without shutting the door on opportunity.
