Ryan Day Believes 24-Team Playoff Would Be Good For College Football, But Might Not Be For Ohio State

As the power conferences struggle to decide on a format for future iterations of the College Football Playoff, coaches are weighing in on what they would like to see.

At the Big Ten spring meetings, Ohio State head coach Ryan Day and Oregon head coach Dan Lanning both said that a 24-team CFP, which the Big Ten has supported, would be good for college football as a whole.

“It’s debatable whether it’s best for Ohio State — you can go back and forth on that — but it’s certainly best for the conference and great for college football in general,” Day said via Adam Rittenberg of ESPN. “It engages more fan bases late in the season.”

Lanning agreed with Day in that it may not help the teams that are consistently near the top of the rankings since they will have to get through more games once they make it to the postseason.

Day spoke more about why there could be debate about whether it would be good for a program like Ohio State, noting that, even though a smaller playoff will only have the best teams in it, a larger pool means there are more opportunities to lose and have a season ended.

“When there was four (teams), you just had to win two games,” Day said. “Now there’s more games to be played, there’s a bigger pool, a bigger field. But when you take a step away from it, you’re always going to be late in the season, playing for an opportunity to be the highest seed that you can be.”

Lanning compared a larger bracket to the NCAA Tournament for college basketball, which always has a lot of eyes on it.

“It’s going to create more opportunity,” he told ESPN. “Just like March Madness is great in the spring for basketball, it’ll be good for our sport.”

It was the case at one point that the Big Ten was the only conference favoring a 24-team bracket, but it has recently been joined by the ACC and Big 12 in that support. The SEC remains steadfast in its push for a 16-team playoff.

Since the Big Ten and SEC weren’t able to agree on a new format by the December deadline, the 2026 CFP will be a 12-team format for the third straight year, but changes could be coming as soon as the 2027 playoff if the two conferences are able to come to an agreement.