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.
Sorry to betray you Z-man, You should relocate to the South, and you will be better off being with real college football fans.
Furthermore, 24 is excellent, and it will be a very long time that they will expand to 32.
Sorry to criticize you Z-Man what you are requesting is totally impossible. Plus, the CFP format needs equal not divide.
Another pipe dream of yours Z-man.
Expanding playoffs in any sport, I don’t care if it’s tiddely-winks, takes away from the regular season.
Shorten the season if you’re going to expand the playoffs. No one conference needs a ticket punched to the title game either. Polls are meaningless in the grand scheme of things. Expand the poll to 138 teams, what difference does it make, it will all look different 7 days later.
BAD IDEAS – as usual.
It’s a better idea than the NBA play-in games, which cost my Cavs dearly in 2022.
This isn’t the NBA (apples and oranges) they ruined that, but the money already had a grip, but now you want to crush college football which was a beautiful thing before NIL. What you suggest will make it as bad as the NBA, which you don’t like. Sounds like a California refugee plan, move to someplace else and complain about California and then turn where you move into another version of it.
As an Ohio State fan, I vehemently oppose the idea of the CFP continuing to have a first-round bye.
Plus the Pac-12 only had three CFP bids as a power conference, a contributing factor to the conference’s collapse. With 32 teams and autobids for all conferences, the Pac-12 would get a team in every year, even if it is not as good as it used to be.
@JM this isnt apples to oranges, this is apples to a 2007 Chevy Malibu in Amber Bronze Metallic
Today is your lucky day if you are Notre Dame.
I’m not a Notre Dame fan, but you obviously hate them. I bet your teams has played 8 FCS teams in the last 10 years. Do you know who many Notre Dame has played in that time span? If they don’t want to be in a conference and maintain the schedule they do, they should be allowed to do that.
@JM nope, USC, proudly FCS free.
Joseph? Are you actually saying that scheduling games against Fresno State, San Jose State and Louisiana is somehow better than what Notre Dame has on their schedule. It’s been stated on here before, and the Irish fans can validate this, they have played one FCS team ever and that was because they had to fill a last-minute vacancy.
Playing games against teams of the caliber SC has on their OOC schedule as ridiculous as what you are claiming against and the Trojans are no different than Indiana, with the exception that USC would not play anyone with Dakota or Montana in their name because that would be a humiliating loss, but in fact what they are scheduling are teams that would lose regularly to the top teams in the FCS, so what’s the difference.
@JM blame our athletic department, we always schedule our non-conference games last minute.
I’m hoping we can get former Pac-12 diaspora such as ASU, Wazzu, and Stanford back on our schedule.
Playing Fresno State, San Jose State and Louisiana isn’t exactly running a gauntlet. That can’t be what you’re saying is it Joseph? Notre Dame has a way more challenging schedule, and if you think that because they played a game against Tennessee State because of a late cancellation, you’re really giving your team too much credit. No FCS teams, you might as well play University of San Diego in place of one of those three and just admit that’s what level of competition is being faced. San Jose only beat Cal Poly by 10, which is one bad break from having the outcome reversed, and I believe they were losing at half time in that one.
You said first it was Notre Dame’s fault, the luck of the Irish as it were. Now you’re blaming YOUR athletic department. If it’s YOUR athletic department, maybe you should call them up and fix the problem, line some of that staff out or make some heads roll. Or leave someone to blame for the losses YOU have on the horizon to Ohio State, Indiana and UCLA.
Why are they expanding? Who wants this?
Seems like a terrible idea.
I’m with you John!
Z-man really does though. Woo hoo! Let’s expand to 138 team tournament!! At least we won’t have 5-7 teams going to meaningless bowl games, but you better shorten the season by at least 1/3, but no one will say they were snubbed.
Look at the FCS, very rarely, last year was the rarity, where you have a team outside the top 10 that makes it to the championship. It’s all about the mighty dollar and it isn’t caring for the fans.
Eight byes is just so many. Top five matchups like Ohio St vs Indiana or Georgia vs Alabama arguably don’t matter at all in this model. The relevant cut line is 8 vs 9! And all to give 8-4 Tennessee or Iowa “a shot” at the title?
Cinderellas are rare in the FCS, but they do at least give every conference that wants one an autobid. The MAC won’t even be able to get into the 24 team playoff. The low seeds will all be thoroughly mediocre power conference teams.
John:
Top 5 matchups will still matter because there’s no guarantee that you stay in the top 8 if you lose them. Yes, you may not guaranteed to drop out of the top 8 if you lose but the margin is still pretty small. For example, if OSU loses to IU this coming weekend, it is almost certain that a 2-loss OSU won’t finish the season in the top 8.
Richard:
Since 2014 Ohio State has finished the regular season with 2 losses 3 times: 2017, 2021, and 2024. In 2017 they were ranked 5th by the committee, and in 2021 and 2024 they were ranked 6th. Maybe it’s different for other teams with a different name on their jersey, but it’s vanishingly unlikely that Ohio St ever misses the top eight.
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!
IF there is a break, it will have to come from the P4. The NCAA is a toothless organization and LSU proved that conferences don’t matter much either as long as you have a judge that’s an alum and backs your position to tell the sports what the teams can do. 12 teams is enough and if you don’t want to have teams advancing, go back to 8. If you’re going to expand at all, a lot of these nonsense bowl games need to be cut before any expansion is approved. The bottom four in any of these formats NEVER wins at this level, 12, 16, 24.
The P4 would love the G6 to break off. But if you’re a G6 AD, good luck trying to sell your boosters on only playing other minnows.
uga-bama already didnt matter last week with 12 teams. enjoy your 3 months of exhibition games. these people are shameful and nobody cares anymore
Proof positive that God is great, beer is really good and people and f’in stupid! Does it take that much thought to see it! You and I can’t be the only ones that get it.
Why don’t we run with this expansion idea and include all levels of the NCAA. No more regular season, we just roll through from the NCAA basketball to the college football playoff. Then we’ll watch track and the grass grow for a couple of months and start all over again.
Eh, that’s only if you think byes don’t matter, or heck, that NFL regular season games don’t matter because almost half the teams make the playoffs there
watched the Saban doc and saw the footage of those old Tebow SEC title games where everything was on the line. the sport had playoff games built in to it. we will never get that excitement again
the nfl games dont matter. if you want NFL go watch NFL why do you need to change everything to something you understand. they expanded the nfl playoffs too and now the beginning and end of the season are preseason games. leave the traditions alone cfb is the only sport that honored the past. i never watched cfb for the BCS title game it was because of saturday. #theprocess
I’m not actually an NFL fan, but it’s hard to ignore that NFL regular season games draw massive viewership (more than almost all CFB regular season games) every week even if you think NFL regular season games don’t matter.
Regular season is very important, Playoffs is a gift.
It’s one of those things that was inevitable no matter how much we like/dislike it.
Personally, I prefer 16 teams with no byes. But it was going to get to 24 eventually anyways. I think as college football fans we are so used to the system the way it has always been with only a select group of teams usually getting in that it’s difficult to comprehend seeing (for example; Virginia vs Boise State) in a playoff game. I suppose this is good news for programs who aren’t a big brand and never get the benefit of the doubt. Bad news for the bigger brands because they are going to usually get in regardless and will have to “win” more games. That part doesn’t bother me. Proving a true champion on the field should be the ultimate goal. I still think that can be proven with 16 teams.
I am always going to be a fan of college football and watch it. Going to try to be optimistic about the bigger playoff and enjoy seeing a wider variety of matchups.
I don’t like the conference championship games going away though. I feel like, with the conferences so large, that conference championship games SHOULD be more important than ever. You can have 2-4 teams at the top and possibly only like 1 game (or even 0) between them. I think being a conference champion should still be important to programs. Ask Indiana in 2025 how they felt about it. Now I know they’ll say “We’ll have tiebreakers decide our champion in the event of a tie” but I truly hate that. If you look at the 2025 Big Ten season for example, would they have a tiebreaker that ultimately allows Ohio State to be crowned the champion without ever playing Indiana? I think in those cases, they will call themselves “Co-champions” like they used to, but I still don’t like that either. And who would get the automatic conference champ bid? I get that both would still make it, but still. Now this is a rare example, but possible with these huge leagues, but what if you have three teams all go 9-0 in the conference? I don’t like seeing a tiebreaker decide between teams that never lost in league play. Just not a fan of these games going away but I can understand why they are.
One good thing that can come of this is making it mandatory for the power leagues to play 10 P4 games (9+1 with one ACC school 8+2). But how do you enforce this? We have teams right now that are scheduled out 3-5 years with a few years that don’t include a P4 school. If it’s a requirement, then it needs to say in the verbiage that you can’t make the playoff if you only have 9 power games. You also have some examples of teams who scheduled Oregon State and Washington State when they were technically still power schools. Do you grant a waiver for those examples? Do you set a year where teams have to comply? I’m really curious how the committee is actually going to enforce this. Regardless, I want it to happen and think every school should have as many challenging games as possible.
I don’t have a problem with co-champs like all conferences use to have. CCGs were always a money grab.
One positive outcome will be the potential of teams playing each other that never or have rarely played each other in one of the teams stadium. They have never with intention scheduled each other as a non-conference game.
Not Worth it to make Entire regular Season MEANLESS!!!
If go to 24, that be Final nail in coffin!!!
College Football has JUMP the SHARK!!!
Michelle: Do you consider the entire NFL regular season meaningless then? After all, almost half the teams in the NFL make the playoffs there, which is more than the percentage of FBS (or even P4) teams that will even with a 24 team CFP.
College Football regular season games are meaningful.
NFL regular season games are meaningful too.
Very nice thing about the regular season is that all the teams are playing.
11 teams don’t have a P4 opponent scheduled in 2027.
– Arizona, Kansas, Ole Miss, and Washington all have WSU or ORST but no 10th P4 school.
– Texas Tech and USC both still have one slot free on their schedule to schedule a 10th P4 school.
– Indiana, Nebraska, Oregon, TCU, and West Virginia have complete schedules with only 9 P4 games (conference only and 0 P4 non-con).
I imagine that there will be waiver for the first few years, but personally, I hope that isn’t the case. These teams should have been aware and planning ahead. With that being said, I know a few of them had cancelled series occur this past spring/summer, which may/may not have been their fault. I believe that it will be a provision written into the CFP rulebook.
If this becomes mandatory right away, how could we solve 2027?
– Arizona could drop Northern Arizona.
– Kansas could drop Southeast Missouri
– Ole Miss could drop Eastern Illinois or Charlotte
– Washington could drop Portland St
– Nebraska could drop Northern Iowa
– Indiana could drop Indiana St
– Oregon could drop Eastern Washington
– TCU could drop Alcorn St
– West Virginia could drop VMI
– Arizona & Nebraska could schedule a game for September 18, 2027 as both would have that date open. Start their home and home series early maybe as well? Arizona has 5 conference road games and Nebraska has 4 conference road games, so maybe it could be played in Arizona?
– Ole Miss & Indiana could schedule a game for September 11, 2027 as both would have that date open. Maybe a Neutral site game?
– Texas Tech & USC scheduling each other would be the easiest as well since both have multiple open dates the same as each other. However, I heard that talks broke down in August over this possible game. Maybe due to the Sorsby stuff? But maybe with that resolved, it’ll open talks back up?
– Washington & West Virginia could schedule a game for September 11, 2027. Maybe neutral site?
– Oregon could schedule with either Kansas or TCU? Both would work. Unfortunately, one team would still be left without a P4 game, unless somebody else was interested in scheduling an 11th P4 game.
Just throwing out ideas for discussion.
I’m not against your ideas but yeah, there will probably be a waiver period for a few years. I also have a feeling that WSU and ORSU will be grandfathered in as honorary P4 members (like how ND is considered one even though they aren’t in a P4 conference) if only to allow/induce UDub and UO to continue/revive the Apple Cup and Civil War.
‘Tis the season…if if’s and but’s were candy and nuts….
This whole thing is nuts already and you want to take the reality of college football schedules out of that. It isn’t as easy as the thoughts of what you feel they could do, there is a whole lot more to it than what you believe.
Of course there is a lot to it and I didn’t doubt that one single bit. LOL.
I was just typing out some thoughts and ideas to get a general discussion going. You don’t have to join the discussion.
It’s like a 0.0000000000000000001% chance of happening and that may even be too high of a number LOL. Just thinking as a Husker fan, how fun it would be to add one of these teams to our schedule in 2027, even though it’s definitely not happening.
The answer to all of the schedule issues is to mandate every p4 school have only 6 home games and 6 road or neutral games. That would get more home and home non conference games
Well, the team left out of a 10th P4 game will not have the option of scheduling an FCS team and be required to play at least one G6 game on the road.
This is a great big turd, and as an old Army buddy of mine was fond of saying, you can try all you want to, but you just can’t polish a turd. This will be a huge mistake if they do this and the idea is unpopular to all but those who really don’t get football.
9 through 24 should consist of all neutral site games following the bowl system that’s been around for decades. Humans should not get to determine who’s the 12 seed or 20 seed with no head to head data available. Complete BS that just lets a bunch of Big 10 and SEC teams host a bunch of ACC and Big 12 teams in the first round with no context on who’s better just what conference makes the most money.
Truth!
Making fanbases travel to even more neutral site games all over a massive country like the US is a nonstarter. Even under the current/new system, a fanbase would have to travel to 3 different places in a continent-sized country if they make the title game.
I get the fanbase argument and have been hearing it for a while now, they can have their own watch parties on campus or in town. When I was growing up these schools did not get to host postseason games and they did fine. The reason they didn’t was mainly the money made for the bowl system but also because those teams didn’t earn a home game against teams from another conference. My point was giving home games to teams based off of educated guesses on whose better with little to sometimes no context is wrong and shouldn’t be allowed in the 9 through 24 bracket. They are too close together in resume
Disheartening but very unsurprising the G6 did not receive more Auto-bids nor were more vocal in their position.
With a 32-team playoff, all 10 FBS conferences, including all the G6 conferences, could get auto bids.
I am confident that 10 conferences can do it with 24.
Yesterday is proof that the CFP should NOT expand to 24 teams! Why are the powers in the CFP that be trying to destroy college football? It’s probably wishful thinking on my part but hopefully those in charge come to their senses and say NO to expanding the CFP.
Not gonna happen. They will never wake up.
I love it!
To those who object to only one auto-bid for the G6, I support that. Here’s why:
1. The P4 are very large conferences, 16-18 a piece while the G6 are only 8-14 in size. I don’t mind treating G6 as one larger conference. Ideally, I would have done two, but one doesn’t bother me.
2. The fact 24 teams will get in will help recruiting for all teams, and there is nothing to say that a second team can’t finish in the Top 24. That’s happened a few times and I think with recruiting being spread out, there’s a chance.
I also love the design. The regular season will matter more than ever as teams fight for either the Top 8 for a bye, or the mIddle 8 for a home game.
It’s going to be a blast.
What a terrible thing to do. Nobody wants this. Regular season will be almost meaningless. When your consumer base is opposed to something you don´t push ahead with it. That never works out.
The only problem with this format is that we will lost conference championship games. :(
It’s not just the loss of conference championship games that is the problem. Regular Season games are not going to mean much anymore. How many four (or even five) loss SEC or Big Ten teams are going to be in the playoffs? With the criteria being not who these teams lost to on the field. But on the basis of brand name recognition. There’s a LOT that is wrong with the expansion to 24 teams.