The College Football Playoff will expand to 24 teams in 2027, ESPN reported Thursday.
Breaking: The College Football Playoff is nearing a deal to expand to 24 teams, sources tell @PeteThamel.
The new format will start in 2027 and is expected to come together in the near future, pending final approvals. https://t.co/jwSAEWwdgO
— ESPN (@espn) October 15, 2026
ESPN reports that the discussions have primarily centered around the format consisting of 19 at-large bids, the Power 4 conference champions as determined by each league and the highest-ranked Group of 6 team. The deal is still pending final approval.
The quarterfinals and semifinals would be played as part of the New Year’s Six (Rose, Fiesta, Sugar, Peach, Orange and Cotton) bowl structure, with the championship game remaining in January.
The proposal also outlines a plan in which teams seeded Nos. 1-8 would receive a bye, then a home game. Teams seeded Nos. 9-16 would host a first-round game. The seeding would include games such as No. 16 hosting No. 17, with the winner advancing to play at No. 1.
More details about the plan are expected to be forthcoming.
The CFP should really be 32 teams, so that the first-round bye can eliminated entirely because of only one team – last year’s champion Indiana – winning coming off a bye.
This would allow for all 10 conferences to have autobids.
And still I want 16 Southern teams to compete for one bid to the title game, and 16 non-Southern teams for the other.
This would likely require an expansion of the CFP poll to 50 teams.
Today is your lucky day if you are Notre Dame.
Why are they expanding? Who wants this?
Seems like a terrible idea.
Here is the financial data surrounding the potential participants (all 138 FBS schools). Because the typical Power-4 (P4) school carries approximately $64.8 million more in athletic expenses than the typical Group-of-6 (G6) school ($32.8 million) this is a Power-4 event. Any offered participation to the G6 manifold comes completely from the discretions of the Power-4 conferences. It should be four P4 conference champions and a solo single G6 auto-bid with 19 at-large bids. There aren’t 24 schools within the P4 able to win a National Championship and there certainly isn’t any school within the 70 representatives of the G6 that could do it either.
Terrible! 16 teams would be plenty with no byes! After all, the top 8 seeds are subjective. I hope the G6 break off from the P4 and form their own path!