Now that college football has finally gotten its playoff to 12 teams, it’s immediately trying to expand it even further in the new era of college sports. A December 1st deadline stands as a hard date for the FBS conferences to figure out what to do for 2026 and beyond.
A 16-team model has been debated and discussed for a little while now, but recent reports on CBSsports.com revealed that the Big Ten has even bigger ideas that could take the playoff to 24 or even as high as a whopping 28 teams. The
article went into the discussion, looked at potential impacts on the bowl system, and showed that the conferences still have a lot to hash out as they try to agree on a long-term vision. Here are some thoughts about CFP expansion talks this summer:
28 teams? Seriously? That’s…actually kind of intriguing
If at the end of last season’s regular season, 28 teams went to the playoffs, and it was based on the CFP rankings, you’d have the likes of UNLV, Memphis, Syracuse, and Colorado all competing for a national championship with Ohio State, Georgia, Texas, Notre Dame, etc. Yet those teams were all 9-3 or better, and would definitely have upset potential. On top of that, fanbases with football programs that can have exceptional seasons now and then but still aren’t going to outright win the SEC (hello, 2018 and 2021 Kentucky!) would be able to make the playoff with very capable teams. Perhaps the Big Ten might be onto something. Maybe a 28-team playoff has more pros than cons. As a Kentucky Wildcats fan, I guess I’d say I’m open to a conversation about it.
One auto-bid per conference please. That’s only fair
In the proposed 16-team model, the Big Ten really wants four Big Ten and four SEC teams to get auto-bids while the Big 12 and ACC can each get two, and then one can be thrown out to the Group of 6. That sounds extremely unfair and is insulting to the sport. The NCAA basketball tournament gives the exact same amount of auto-bids to the SWAC as it does to the SEC, and the at-large spots are filled by the most deserving teams with the most deserving resumes. College football should be no different. Whether it’s 12, 16, 24, or even 28 teams, all the conferences in FBS should be given the same number of auto-bids or the Power 4 split apart from the Group of 6 into two different leagues entirely. It’s only fair.
Bowl season and bowl viewership
One common talking point, and one alluded to in Brandon Marcello’s article, is that the bigger the playoff, the worse the teams to fill the bowl games. Yet last season, apparently, non-playoff bowl viewership went up instead of down when the playoff went from 4 to 12 teams, and it actually kind of made sense. In my mind, if the majority of December football on TV is CFP games, but there are non-CFP games thrown into the mix as well, that’s more interesting to watch than if all the December games are regular bowls except for two semifinals around New Year’s and then a championship late on a January Monday work night after all the holidays are over. Bowl attendances might suffer, but perhaps not viewership.
