Well, we all knew this was going to happen, but it still stings like a son of a gun, doesn’t it?
The cat’s out of the bag, the CFP and ESPN reached a new, around $1.7 billion deal yesterday that gives the sports channel exclusive broadcasting rights for the playoffs until 2031 and expands the bracket from 12 to 24 teams. One big sub-point of this is that the Power Four conferences will now lose their conference championship games in favor of the start of the tournament. The Group of Six conferences have
not announced they will be doing the same as of the time of writing, but that will need to be determined soon.
Many fans, journalists and insiders all across the college football world have voiced the same opinion, this is a bad thing and will most likely lead to the end of college football as we know it (and not for the better). Here’s why.
Power Fo– I mean, the SEC Reigns Supreme
One of the biggest criticisms of the CFP Committee has been their bias towards SEC schools, a trend that sadly leaked into their initial rankings released last week and is speculated by the community to continue into the new format. The SEC had 10 programs in the top 25, with five of them making the cut if the tournament started that week and two just barely out of contention. For reference, the Big Ten had six (two in, one fringe), the Big 12 had five (two in, one fringe) and the ACC had two (one in, one fringe). Outside of Notre Dame, there was only one non-power four school, that being Boise State at No. 25.
By those metrics, the SEC makes up 40 percent of the total spots in the top 25 and 41.6 percent of the teams competing in the tournament in 2026-27. Some schools, like 6-2 Alabama or Texas, were placed above others with better, more concrete records, like 8-0 UCLA or 7-1 BYU, whose only sin was losing to the third-best team in the rankings. Apparently, a program can’t even make one single mistake (even in scheduling) without the committee looking at you as lesser than the SEC, especially if they aren’t one of the programs that have been on top over the past decade.
Looking forward into next year, the only school that would miss the playoffs in the new format would be No. 24 Florida, who would take the bench in favor of Boise State because the committee was so humbly gracious to allow the Group of Six conferences one guaranteed spot for the highest ranked among them. This is disgusting, as it is only an SEC glorifying party that we all have to sit and watch if we want to see any televised college football past Thanksgiving outside of the bowl games–which are also in peril in more ways than one.
Money has more importance than actual prestige
Over the last six years, the college football world has gone through a metamorphosis. The focus has shifted from team prestige and players building a professional-ready resume for the draft to teams trying to fundraise enough money for an eight-figure roster budget and players using the transfer portal to get a contract they may or may not deserve. While a lot of this has been seen by programs and players, the CFP Committee and ESPN has shown they have also started to only see the green.
As I mentioned earlier, the deal between the CFP and ESPN is now inked at nearly $1.7 billion through the 2031 season. The price tag of broadcasting these games is steep, but makes a lot of sense when you look at how many eyes are on the product. Just last year, the national championship game between Miami and Indiana drew in 30.1 million people according to Zach Barnett of Footballscoop. Coming in second was the Alabama-Indiana Rose Bowl quarterfinal 23.9 million, and third was the Cotton Bowl quarterfinal between Miami and Ohio State which drew 19 million. Of the 10 most viewed games of the 2025 season, six of them were CFP games, and the only two that were not a conference championship or CFP matchup was the Ohio State vs Michigan rivalry game and Texas vs Ohio State.
That kind of viewership is insane. Combining all of the numbers, the entire 2025-26 CFP had 181.7 million viewers. In comparison, the 2026 Super Bowl had 125.6 million average viewers. Stacking one game against a whole set of 11 is a bit unfair, but it does show how much people tune in for these games. That’s nearly 200 million sets of eyes that ESPN can put ads in front of, promote things from sister channels to and try to entertain by throwing Pat McAfee on commentary (I actually kind of like him, so no digs there).
The Group of Six Are Being Sent to the Curb
I briefly alluded to this during the SEC section earlier, but the group of six schools are the programs that will be ruined by this expansion the most.
Going from getting one, maybe two spots out of 12 in the current format depending on the year to having one reserved spot for the highest ranked is a death blow to any chance of having multiple non-power four schools in the bracket. They will not be able to truly best the CFP committee’s bias for power four schools; we saw that last week when New Mexico was not added to the top 25. Only having Boise State on the list and putting them in the final spot was a message to the group of six, that they are not good enough in the committee’s eyes and they should just go for the meaningless bowl games for some extra cash.
On top of that, there won’t be many chances for the higher-end G6 schools to show they can get to the next level anymore either. Every power four school needs to have 10 conference games, meaning there are two games for each school to schedule. Schools like Boise State, Western Michigan, New Mexico, UNLV and others have had either extremely tight losses to those schools or pulled out wins, and the power four know that a loss to one of the aforementioned programs will tank their CFP stock. So, they just won’t schedule them anymore, making it even harder for any G6 program to climb the ranks.
All in all, this greedy, money-fueled expansion of the College Football Playoff will be the death of college football as we know it. As much as I have been an opponent of this idea, it is becoming more and more clear that the group of six is basically getting no amount of support from anyone in the powers above and will have to form their own playoff tournament. It would essentially turn the landscape of college football into the FCS with three tiers: the power four, the group of six and the actual FCS subdivision.
I am completely against this idea, and we all should actively fight this and petition for the group of six to have more representation in the CFP. There should be one spot for EACH conference champion (whether you want that to be the best of the regular season or an actual game to determine that) so that way all of the FBS level is represented. However, at the current rate, we might have to prepare for the former.
