The College Football Playoff is reportedly nearing a deal to expand to 24 teams beginning in 2027, according to ESPN's Pete Thamel. The move represents the largest structural change to college football's postseason since the playoff's inception in 2014, and it arrives with the inevitability of a conference realignment press release: everyone saw it coming, nobody could stop it, and the people who profit most will insist it's about the fans.
The expansion follows the CFP's jump from four to twelve teams just two seasons ago—a change that was itself sold as the definitive fix to decades of BCS-era controversies. That twelve-team format barely had time to crown two champions before the committees began drawing up plans for its successor. The message is clear: there is no equilibrium in college football, only escalation.
The math of more
Twenty-four teams means roughly 19 percent of FBS programs will make the playoff in any given year. For context, 68 of 363 Division I basketball programs make March Madness—about 19 percent. College football has now reverse-engineered its way into basketball's model while maintaining the fiction that every regular-season game is sacred.
The financial logic is unassailable. More playoff games mean more television inventory. More television inventory means more rights fees. More rights fees mean larger distributions to conferences, which mean larger coaching salaries, which mean more pressure to make the playoff, which mean more demand for expansion. The flywheel spins.
Critics will note that a 24-team field dilutes the regular season's stakes—why agonize over a November loss when a three-loss team can still dance? But this criticism misunderstands the product. College football stopped being about the regular season when it started being about the transfer portal, NIL deals, and conference television contracts. The playoff is the content now. Everything else is preseason.
Who wins, who loses
The Group of Five conferences gain the most, at least symbolically. More spots theoretically mean more access for programs outside the SEC and Big Ten duopoly. But theoretical access and actual competitiveness are different things. A 24-team bracket that seeds by committee will still place Boise State against Alabama in round one. The beatings will simply be more numerous.
The players, meanwhile, face an extended season that already pushes into mid-January. A 24-team format could mean four playoff games for finalists—on top of a twelve-game regular season and a conference championship. The physical toll compounds annually, even as the athletes' leverage over their own labor remains contested in courtrooms.
Our take
The 24-team playoff is neither good nor bad; it is simply what happens when a sport refuses to choose between being a regional tradition and a national entertainment product. College football chose both, and now it gets neither. The expansion will generate billions, produce some genuinely thrilling games, and leave everyone involved slightly more exhausted and slightly less satisfied than before. That is the American way, and college football has always been very American.
