With the expansion of the NCAA basketball tournament just done, attention turns to college football, where postseason expansion has seemingly been an inevitability since the College Football Playoff enlarged to 12 teams. It’ll be a 12-team field in 2026, but expansion is imminent—whether that’s to 16 teams or 24 teams is the only sticking point.
The Big Ten is pushing a 24-team format, while the SEC is for now supporting a 16-team field. The ACC left no doubt where it stands on the matter during its
spring meetings this week.
You’ll be hard pressed to find a coach in any sport who is against expanding the postseason, because an expanded postseason means job security. That aside, being in the playoffs and having the pretense of a chance of winning a championship, well, it beats the alternative.
The P4 vacuuming any and all useful talent out of the G5 has maybe created more teams in a given year that can win a national title, and it’s more difficult to hoard talent when budget constraints enter the picture—but if it was a four-team race in the BCS/early CFP era, it might be an eight-team race now. From that perspective, it’s not necessary to expand the field.
But that’s no fun. You’d never catch me believing that NC State could win the national championship in football, but would I like to experience what it’s like to be in the playoffs? Hell yeah I would.
When they do expand the postseason, it’s going to mean the end of conference championship games (sorry, Dr. Pepper), because they can’t keep extending the season into January, and coaches don’t want that, anyway. I have mixed feelings about that, but it’s also clear they need to move up the entire calendar so that teams aren’t still playing well after the transfer portal has opened. The season already feels too long. If somehow expanding the playoffs actually shortens the season overall, that’s a good thing.
