The College Football Playoff will double in size to 24 teams beginning next year, bringing an end to a three-decade era of conference title games that used to be among the marquee events of the season.
Alabama holds the record for most SEC Championship titles with 30, followed by Georgia with 16. These two teams met last season for the title and are currently in contention to meet again for what will be the last conference championship for at least five years.
College leaders announced the new format Monday, after ESPN agreed to rework its contract to add the 11 new games. Terms were not announced, though ESPN said it was a deal for five years and additional $1.7 billion, on top of the $7.8 billion contract that runs through the 2031 season.
The revenue generated from the new games will presumably make up for the estimated $345 million the Power Four conference title games were worth. ESPN would then not be on the hook for $140 million of the extra money due to cancellation of the title games, the network reported.
The new format will have five automatic qualifiers — the champions of the Power Four league s and the best-ranked team in the smaller Group of Six conferences — with the other 19 teams being chosen by a selection panel. Notre Dame does not receive any guarantees, the way it does this year if it's ranked in the top 12 for what will be the last year of the 12-team postseason.
The top eight seeds will receive first-round byes in the new format and the playoff will start on the second weekend in December, with the first two rounds of games on campus. The traditional Army-Navy game will be played on the first weekend in December, which used to be reserved for conference title games.
Both the Southeastern and Big Ten conferences, whose approval was needed to adopt this change, and their Power Four brethren — the Big 12 and Atlantic Coast Conference — are banking that most of the additional spots will go to their members so some of the second-tier teams have new motivation to keep spending big in an era of NIL and $50 million football rosters.
The Southeastern Conference currently has nine teams in the CFB Playoff rankings. Those rankings will be updated Tuesday, but that means over half of the conference would qualify for the playoff if those specific rankings were used this year to determine the championship playoffs.
“Opening the playoff to more programs, more student-athletes and more fan bases across the country is great for college football,” said Mississippi State president Mark Keenum, who is chair of the CFP board. "We look forward to seeing this expanded format come to life next season.”
The first final for the 24-team playoff remains set for Jan. 24, 2028, in New Orleans. Traditional bowl games will still host the quarterfinal and semifinal rounds.
As part of the expansion, the CFP is requiring Power Four teams to play at least 10 “qualifying” regular-season games against conference foes, other Power Four opponents and Notre Dame. Group of Six teams will have to play 10 games against conference opponents and a mix of G6 teams, Notre Dame and other independents.
The agreement guarantees two off weeks during a regular season that will begin the week before Labor Day.
The new system won’t be a completely clean break. Critics see a risk in giving more power to a selection committee that hasn’t really mastered the four- or 12-team brackets. The exclusion of Florida State in 2023 and Notre Dame last season stand out as the best examples -- and the first rankings release of this season left people scratching their heads again.
Skeptics also view the expanded playoff as another watering-down of what’s largely seen as one of the most important regular seasons in sports. But, as Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti argued from the beginning, a postseason that gives bubble teams hope and keeps others vying for home-field advantage or byes will bring more eyes — not fewer — to the end of a regular season that sometimes boils down to only three or four traditional rivalry games with meaning.
Going by betting numbers, Alabama has some of the highest odds to make the playoffs, as analysts expect the Tide to defeat every team remaining on its regular season schedule: Vanderbilt, Chattanooga, and Auburn.
