Why there are a multitude of issues with the 24-team playoff expansion - ESPN

Bill Connelly Oct 16, 2026, 01:18 PM ET

Close Bill Connelly is a writer for ESPN. He covers college football, soccer and tennis. He has been at ESPN since 2019.

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For more than 50 years, we argued about it. Starting around 1960 with Northwestern athletic director Stu Holcomb's proposal for a "World Series" of college football -- six conference champions and the top two independents playing a three-round tournament, all finished by Jan. 1 -- the din of a playoff debate was never far in the distance. Because a lot of the most influential people in the college football industry (namely, bowl directors) benefited handsomely from the bowl system, we didn't get one until 2014.

College football long made a habit of moving far too slowly, be it toward a fair system for determining a national title or toward fairly compensating players. But now the gas pedal is stuck, and we're flying down the highway at ridiculous speeds. We cannot stop changing things. Conference realignment gave us supersized and geographically nonsensical conferences. We've gone from (legally) paying players $0 per year (plus educational benefits) to amassing over $40 million rosters. And starting in 2027, we'll have a playoff six times bigger than the one we got just 12 years ago. Unlike when that one came around, very few people were clamoring for this one.

According to ESPN's Pete Thamel and Heather Dinich, the College Football Playoff and ESPN are nearing a deal to expand the playoff in 2027. Whether any of us likes it or not, it's coming. Let's talk about why, what this changes and how it will impact the way we watch the game.

I've made it clear what I think about this

Back in May, when the push for 24-team inevitability got rolling, I shared plenty of thoughts on the matter. Some bullet points:

The entire college football industry is built around the TV ratings pulled by huge games (most of them in the regular season) played in front of huge crowds. Voluntarily making those games less important, while also rapidly raising ticket prices and pressure on donors to donate, is playing with fire. All the complaints from playoff skeptics in the past -- about the damaged integrity of the regular season, not to mention the harm to bowls, would ring dramatically true in a way it didn't with a four- or 12-team CFP.

The logistical puzzle of adding a fifth playoff round when you haven't even mastered four yet -- and when your December-January calendar is already its own mess that should be figured out -- is an unnecessary complication.

Although big playoffs at the lower levels of college football can be delightful, every other level includes conference champions, but we're not doing that. There's no room for the MAC champion when an 8-4 Big Ten team needs to be rewarded for how much money it's spending.

We're going from handing out 15-20 mulligans per year (that's approximately the number of combined losses teams in the 12-team CFP have) to 45-50. We're therefore lowering the stakes for about 30 extra games per year -- featuring really good teams, no less -- and we're replacing that with higher stakes for lesser teams.

As part of the trade-off for adding an extra round, conferences are evidently going to ditch their title games. There are ways around that, as I'll talk about below, but ditching them means getting rid of even more in-season jeopardy.

There are three main (and at least semi-legitimate) arguments I've seen for a 24-teamer. I just don't think they're good enough.

1. If we're rewarding more teams with playoff berths, it could tamp down a coaching carousel that seems to be getting crazier and louder. (There's a reason the only people I heard really arguing for a 24-teamer, before Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti, were coaches.) Here's a reminder that Penn State fired James Franklin half a season after he came within about a minute of the national title game. It will take about two or three years for a coach to get fired after a first-round loss. Simply making the CFP will become less important every year.