The Ripple Effects of a 24-Team College Football Playoff
The College Football Playoff announced plans on Monday to expand to a 24-team field beginning in 2027, and there will be several ripple effects that will fundamentally change the sport.
Key points
- Power Four conference title games to be eliminated Five teams will auto-qualify with rest picked by panel The College Football Playoff will double in size to 24 teams beginning next year, bringing an end to a three-decade era of conference title games that were among the marquee events of the season.
- College leaders announced the new format Monday, after ESPN agreed to rework its contract to add the 11 new games.
- Terms were not announced, though ESPN said it was a deal for five years and an additional $1.7bn, on top of the $7.8bn contract that runs through the 2031 season.
No two-loss team ever made the Playoff in the four-team era (2014–23), and Clemson (2024) is the only team to have made the 12-team field (2024–present) with three regular-season losses.
Sixty-one different teams across nine different conferences would have made the Playoff over the last five years if a 24-team field was in place.
Additional details
- Scheduling The 24-team Playoff will bring schedule uniformity across the sport, a key point in reaching an agreement.
- Under the 24-team Playoff, the margin for error will be much wider.
- The new field will consist of every conference champion from the Power 4 (ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, SEC), the highest-ranked team from the Group of 6 (American, Conference USA, MAC, Mountain West, Pac-12, or Sun Belt) and 19 at-large spots selected by the CFP selection committee.
- The Playoff’s expansion has been met with public criticism, which executive director Rich Clark acknowledged on Monday when speaking with reporters, but a unanimous vote by the 10 FBS conferences and Notre Dame athletic director Pete Bevacqua pushed the decision forward.
- According to ESPN, the CFP and ESPN have signed a five-year, nearly $1.7 billion deal, adding to the existing $7.8 billion media rights package between the CFP and ESPN for the 12-team format that runs until 2032.
How this summary was made: extractive summary — built from the sources' own reporting. It is drawn only from the reporting of the sources listed below — read the originals for full detail. How we summarize →
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