The Ripple Effects of a 24-Team College Football Playoff

The College Football Playoff announced plans on Monday to expand to a 24-team field beginning in 2027, and there will be several ripple effects that will fundamentally change the sport. The new field will consist of every conference champion from the Power 4 (ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, SEC), the highest-ranked team from the Group of 6 (American, Conference USA, MAC, Mountain West, Pac-12, or Sun Belt) and 19 at-large spots selected by the CFP selection committee. 

The Playoff’s expansion has been met with public criticism, which executive director Rich Clark acknowledged on Monday when speaking with reporters, but a unanimous vote by the 10 FBS conferences and Notre Dame athletic director Pete Bevacqua pushed the decision forward. According to ESPN, the CFP and ESPN have signed a five-year, nearly $1.7 billion deal, adding to the existing $7.8 billion media rights package between the CFP and ESPN for the 12-team format that runs until 2032. 

There are a few schedule changes of note as well, including the Army-Navy game in a standalone spot during the first weekend of December, with the Heisman Trophy ceremony taking place that same weekend. 

“We’re aware of the fan sentiment, and that many fans aren’t in favor of expansion,” Clark said. “That was certainly weighed into the decision and it was considered. But ultimately, we just need to make a spectacular Playoff.” 

Loss of Conference Championship Games 

Conferences were not required to nix their championship game to accommodate Playoff expansion; however shortly after the CFP’s announcement, all four power conferences sent out press releases confirming they will sunset their league title games after this year. 

The additional revenue from more Playoff games is aimed to offset the financial loss of conference championship games, which could equal losses surpassing $200 million. As recently as the spring, coaches in the SEC were split on the idea of removing the championship game, including Georgia coach Kirby Smart. 

“I’m really more worried about the financial burden that we’re under right now of paying for all of the athletic department,” Smart said at SEC spring meetings in May. “And when you take that revenue stream [from the SEC championship game] out, can we make it work, and is it sustainable to do without it would be my biggest concern.”

In the absence of title games, each conference will name a champion through regular-season records and its own internal tiebreakers. But without the game itself, coaches are starting to call the relevancy of conferences into question, especially in the conference realignment era. 

“It can benefit a team like us, it can hurt a team like us,” Wake Forest coach Jake Dickert told reporters on Monday. “You can play all sides of the coin. But to not say we’re going to have conference champions, why do we have conferences? I know there’s a lot of things that go into all that. Just feels odd.” 

Increased Variety

Expansion means a wider variety of teams and team profiles that will have a chance to compete. No two-loss team ever made the Playoff in the four-team era (2014–23), and Clemson (2024) is the only team to have made the 12-team field (2024–present) with three regular-season losses. Under the 24-team Playoff, the margin for error will be much wider. 

Sixty-one different teams across nine different conferences would have made the Playoff over the last five years if a 24-team field was in place. Over that time span, 35 teams with three losses would’ve made the field and 12 teams with four losses would’ve received a bid. There’s only one instance in the last five years (2024) where there wouldn’t have been at least one four-loss team. 

Scheduling

The 24-team Playoff will bring schedule uniformity across the sport, a key point in reaching an agreement. Prior to 2026, the ACC, Big 12, and SEC required each team to play at least 10 Power 4 games, while the Big Ten did not. Notre Dame, an independent, is also not formally required to play 10 Power 4 games. That will change moving forward. 

The CFP’s new scheduling standard requires the Power 4 to play at least “10 qualifying regular season games” consisting of conference games and nonconference games against other P4 programs or Notre Dame. If the rule applied this season, then Indiana—last year’s national champion—would not be compliant. Other teams that failed to meet that requirement this year include Arizona, Houston, Kansas State, Nebraska, Penn State, Texas Tech, USC, and Washington. 

There are several teams that will need to adjust their 2027 schedules to fulfill this requirement: Indiana, Missouri, Nebraska, Oregon, TCU, Texas Tech, and USC. 

Oregon State and Washington State, members of the newly re-formed Pac-12, will count as P4 games in 2027 even though the Pac-12 is considered a G6 conference. That’s because they had games scheduled in advance while the Pac-12 was considered a power conference before realignment began in 2023. 

Within the Group of 6, there is a similar 10-game qualifying game requirement, consisting of conference games and nonconference games against another G6 school, a P4 school, Notre Dame or another independent institution. 

There will also be uniformity within conference scheduling. Prior to the 2026 season, the ACC and SEC only played eight conference games, while the Big Ten and Big 12 played nine. The two eight-game leagues agreed to expand to nine games beginning in 2026, with each SEC team playing nine games and the ACC adopting a hybrid format because it has 17 teams. This season, 12 teams are playing nine conference games, and five teams are playing eight. Starting in 2027, 16 teams will play nine conference games annually, while one rotating team will play eight conference games.

Bowl Game Restructuring

The number of bowl games surpassed 40 this decade, but with the expanded Playoff and the introduction of NIL (name, image, and likeness) and the transfer portal already affecting team and player participation over the last several years, the future of bowls is in question. Bowl season will undoubtedly change, whether that’s in scheduling, the number of games, conference affiliations, etc., but industry sources have indicated a strong interest in keeping bowls afloat in some capacity. Beyond that interest, it becomes a math problem of the availability of teams in the 24-team era.

If the 24-team Playoff were in place last season, 11 of the 12 additional Playoff spots would have gone to Power 4 teams; the other spot would have gone to Notre Dame based on last season’s final rankings. 

Every team that would’ve been an at-large last season, except Notre Dame—which opted out of the Pop-Tarts Bowl—played in a bowl game last year. The number of teams available moving forward will change the math and quality of team inventory. How affiliations and inventory look moving ahead is a conversation that’s already started. 

Industry sources indicate that the Group of 6 interest in traditional bowl games remains incredibly high, as there’s not a direct correlation, or guarantee, between an expanded playoff and more access. 

“I don’t see having to change or do anything different than what we’ve been doing,” a Group of 6 bowl game executive director told Front Office Sports in October. “There’s a lot of people who want to speculate about the future of bowl games … I’ve had conversations with both my conference partners, and as we sit and talk here today, there’s no thoughts in their heads of anything different.”