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What will the College Football Playoff look like in 2026? The primary options as deadline nears
It remains to be seen whether next season’s Playoff format will be determined before this season’s champion has been crowned.
www.nytimes.com
What will the College Football Playoff look like in 2026? The primary options as deadline nears
Updated Jan. 2, 2026
With an extra six weeks to talk about it, the administrators who oversee the College Football Playoff are making one last push to expand the postseason format in time for the 2026 season.
ESPN gave the CFP management committee a reprieve by extending a Dec. 1 deadline to inform the network of just how many Playoff games will be played next season to Jan. 23. The deadline will not be extended again.
The options haven’t changed much since late summer:
- Stay at a 12-team field with five spots for the highest-ranked conference champions, which is the default if consensus on an expansion plan cannot be reached.
- Expand to 16 teams next year by adding four at-large spots to the current bracket.
- Expand to 24 teams, which would require more than one year’s notice to implement.
If the Big Ten is willing to back away from the field mostly being set via automatic qualifiers — which the league appears to be now, people familiar with the direction of discussions believe — maybe the SEC would be open to doubling the size of the field within the next two or three years?
The Athletic spoke to several people involved in or briefed on the discussions to get an idea of where the possibility of expansion stands heading toward a pivotal in-person gathering of CFP officials, the day before the Jan. 19 national championship game in South Florida.
The odds of expansion seem to be increasing, but this is still very much an active negotiation.
“Expansion is a necessity,” one person familiar with the discussions said. “The question is when and how?”
The SEC has made where it stands more than clear over the last month or so, from commissioner Greg Sankey to Mississippi State president Mark Keenum, who heads the CFP’s board of managers. The SEC wants a 16-team Playoff with as few spots dedicated to automatic qualifiers (AQs) as possible.
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Expanding the Playoff to 24 teams would be complicated, starting with the elimination of conference championship games and the reworking of TV contracts that include them, and it is not something college football could flip the switch on less than a year out from the 2026 season. Realistically, the soonest a postseason of that size could be implemented would be the 2027 season, but there is at least some interest beyond Big Ten country.
Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark publicly acknowledged being intrigued by 24. The components of the model, which would de-emphasize the selection committee and create a more clearly defined path to qualification through conference play, address a lot of common complaints about the current format and the changing standards of success in major college football.
But the SEC is not on board.
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Just sayin': Might as well just go to 16 teams. If they had 16 teams this year; #11 Notre Dame, #12 BYU, #13 Texas, and #14 Vanderbilt would have gotten in; and in lieu of Notre Dame and Texas, #15 Utah and #16 USC would be bitching....
