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Syracuse athletic director Bryan Blair is in favor of the College Football Playoff expanding to 24 teams for one main reason: access.
“I think a 24-team playoff—for those teams fighting at the end of the season to try to get in —that matters a lot,” Blair told Front Office Sports’ Dan Roberts. “And if you can dangle a carrot for those top teams that have some incentive to perform better at the end too, I think we can get something that’s really, really compelling.”
FBS commissioners and university presidents are in the process of crystallizing a 24-team model that could begin in the 2027-28 season after reportedly reaching a “handshake agreement” with ESPN earlier this month.
The Orange have never made it to the CFP, and won’t get a chance this year either. The program is struggling season with 3-5 overall record—despite an overtime win against UNC last weekend. But Blair noted they would have if this format had commenced earlier. In 2024, the first year with coach Fran Brown at the helm of the program, the team enjoyed a Top 25 ranking with a 10-3 record. “We’d have been in the 24-team playoff and we’d have been a player in that,” Blair said.
In addition to the bragging rights (and prize payouts), there are untold marketing and exposure benefits. Blair mentioned the possibility of a home playoff game in Syracuse’s home stadium, the JMA Wireless Dome, which he said could be “one of the most transformational sports experiences in central New York history.”
Blair also noted another potential impact of the CFP: the decline of historic bowl games not part of the CFP bracket.
In the current era of college sports, an expanded CFP appearance is more desirable than a bowl game appearance. “ESPN and the talking heads talking nonstop about the Block S and Syracuse, there’s that jolt of energy that happens—and I don’t know that you get that same thing from a bowl game,” Blair said. “I just think bowls nowadays, with the young people, the compensation that we’re having, I don’t know that it means maybe what it used to.”
Bowl Season executive director Nick Carparelli previously told FOS the organization is “working with the conferences now to determine how many opportunities their institutions are going to want and need beyond the CFP, and the bowl season is going to be flexible enough to fit the postseason demand into the next cycle.”
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