College football’s national champion will be crowned tonight when the Ohio State Buckeyes take on the Notre Dame Fighting Irish. Both teams battled and fought through the 12-team CFP field in its inaugural year. That format has come under scrutiny throughout the regular season and even more so in the postseason. The debates may be more trouble than they’re worth considering how fluid the state of college football is.
Reports indicate that the 12-team playoff could be a two-year trial run of an extended playoff before a 14-team playoff is adopted for the 2026 season. The additional two teams would be added to the front end of the playoff field, with the SEC and Big Ten champions earning the top two seeds and a first-round bye. These reports have been circulating for as long as we have known about the 12-team playoff. Some newer developments about the long-term future of the CFP have surfaced. It will likely expand to 16 teams in 2031 when the media rights contracts are up for negotiation.
Imminent CFP Expansion
The college football season comes to an end tonight. Will Howard and Ohio State face Riley Leonard and Notre Dame in the CFP National Championship. Both teams have had tough obstacles to overcome on their road to Atlanta, with Notre Dame needing to go undefeated after their early-season loss to Northern Illinois and Ohio State losing a pair of conference games to Oregon and Michigan. The up-and-down nature of these teams’ seasons reflects the discourse on the entire CFP format. Even in the inaugural season of the 12-team format, it’s been a bumpy ride for the new postseason in college football.
The debates raged on all season about who should or shouldn’t get the first-round bye or home-field advantage. The structure of the postseason will be evaluated after Ohio State and Notre Dame face off and be scrutinized until the next season begins. Next year is the only remaining guaranteed year of the 12-team playoff. Beyond 2025, there is rampant speculation that a 14-team playoff will be adopted.
As college football looks more and more like the NFL, their postseason format is going to follow suit. With 14 teams, the SEC and Big Ten champions would receive the top two seeds and a bye. Discussions have been going on about revamping the expanded. CFP Executive Director Rich Clark gave credence to these reports when he addressed the Sports Business Journal’s Intercollegiate Athletics Forum.
“The commissioners will look at is 14 a better number [starting in 2026] after they see results of this playoff. How can we make it better? 14 [teams] is one of the options, staying at 12 is one of the options.”
Reported CFP Expansion On the Horizon
2026 is not the furthest horizon for the CFP. The postseason format for 2026 and beyond is going to become more clear in the next couple of months. What is looming in the distance now is a possible 16-team playoff field. The powers that be with the CFP are looking at the media rights deals that expire in 2031 and looking for ways to get a bigger and better deal. Further expansion is the likeliest path to achieve that.
The renewal of these media contracts with the evolving state of live television viewing creates an interesting situation for the decision-makers in college football. Clark and others are gearing up to flaunt a 16-team playoff that would start in 2032 and help net them more money from networks to broadcast the ever-expanding CFP. The same playbook that they used for the media rights deals that started this season is going to be in play for the next negotiations in seven years. More games and more teams will be a key feature of these negotiations and the CFP will continue to change.
Final Thoughts
The allure of money is nothing new in college football and I don’t expect it to stop being the primary influence in decision-making anytime soon. Having a 16-team playoff for TV networks is a great bartering chip and the powers that be will use it to negotiate a higher dollar figure for their product. Adding more postseason games is not the best way forward for the health of the sport, literally and figuratively. Having student-athletes play what could be a 17-game season is just too much. Stringing out these young men thin is likely to have some unintended consequences down the line.
The CFP should be six teams. The novelty of the postseason would still be intact while maintaining value for every single game of the regular season for the top contenders in the sport. The 14-team playoff has introduced the conversation about whether or not conference championship games are meaningful. If the playoff field was at six, those conversations would likely cease to exist. The CFP can have two weekends with two playoff games before their national championship and strike a balance between quantity and urgency that distinguishes college football from the NFL.
