College Football Playoff expansion live updates: A look at 12-team field, news and analysis
Could a 12-team College Football Playoff arrive before 2026? Here’s what we know
With a 12-team College Football Playoff format having already been approved for the 2026 season, CFP executive director Bill Hancock said after two days of meetings this week that expansion any earlier would be “icing on the cake.”
“We’re going to have our cake in 2026,” Hancock said Wednesday. “Can we ice it now and start earlier? That’s what we’re working on now.”
The CFP management committee — the 10 FBS conference commissioners and Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick — met for nearly seven hours on Tuesday and for roughly two hours on Wednesday at Big Ten headquarters as they went about implementing the future 12-team format that was voted on by the CFP’s board of managers on Sept. 2.
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Let us know your thoughts on what’s to come
It’s been a few weeks since the College Football Playoff cemented a 12-team postseason. The powers that be have plenty to address, from the possibility of expanding before 2026 to scheduling playoff games and dividing up revenue, but that checklist will be ticked off in due course.
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CFP expansion talks continue
In order for the College Football Playoff to expand from four to 12 teams before the 2026 season, its leaders have to work out a number of major and minor details.
They need to finalize the dates on which games will be played, as well as where they’ll be played and where they’ll be broadcast on television. But they also need to know the best available broadcast windows before they lock in the date of a game, a vitally important detail. And the venues and their respective hotel blocks need to be available for those dates and times.
“It’s like the chicken or the egg,” CFP executive director Bill Hancock said Thursday.
These issues are all intertwined, and they all have to be resolved in concert for early CFP expansion efforts to succeed. At the latest, the CFP will expand to the new 12-team format by 2026, with half of the spots going to the six highest-ranked conference champions and the other six going to at-large selections. But can CFP leaders get it done sooner?
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What’s next? The task(s) before the commissioners
The College Football Playoff is expanding its field from four to 12 teams, and it is doing so in time for the 2026 regular season at the latest. The field will include the six highest-ranked conference champions and six at-large teams each year. This much is known.
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How will expanded Playoff help college football?
Nicole Auerbach has the answer.
A 12-team College Football Playoff in the BCS/CFP eras
An expanded 12-team College Football Playoff is coming soon, opening the door to far more schools having legitimate hopes of making it into the field, even if the number of teams that can actually win it may still be limited.
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Thoughts from the Big Ten
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Florida AD: Playoff campus games will be ‘all-time type event’
Florida athletic director Scott Stricklin has long advocated for an expanded College Football Playoff. All the way back to 2014, in fact, which was the year the four-team model debuted.
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As college football resets, CFP expansion offers hope to all conference tiers
The moment came during a teleconference to discuss a merger that never actually came to fruition.
In November 2011, college football was busy remaking itself — just as it is now. For the briefest of moments, Conference USA and the Mountain West were planning to combine their operations and create a league that Yahoo! columnist Dan Wetzel perfectly described as “Conference WTF.” But while talking about the alliance (too soon?) that never was to be, then-Conference USA commissioner Britton Banowsky said something we’d all do well to remember now.
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Thoughts from the ACC
ACC commissioner Jim Phillips on CFP expansion.
CFP expansion arrives just in time for everyone outside the Big Ten, SEC
It had been the summer of doom and gloom for college football fans. First the transfer portal was going to kill off the sport. Then NIL. And then, most certainly, super-conferences. Rip up your season tickets, Virginia Tech fans. Skip Homecoming, Iowa State fans. Because if your team is not in the Big Ten or SEC by 2024, it might as well close up shop.
But then, lo and behold, on the Friday before the unofficial last weekend of summer, the 11 university presidents who oversee the College Football Playoff went and threw the 99 FBS programs not in or headed to those two conferences a big fat life preserver.
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AAC’s Mike Aresco thrilled with CFP expansion
AAC’s Mike Aresco tells The Athletic he’s thrilled with the 6 conference champions/6 at-large setup. Said it allows everyone to start the season with “real hope.” He’s happy Cincinnati made it last year but notes “it took a near miracle” and required Notre Dame on the schedule.
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The good outweighs the bad!
There are two different ways to look at CFP expansion
A. More teams get in, more games matter, more fans engaged.
B. Alabama, Ohio State, Georgia get more mulligans and likely more titles.
I’m willing to take B to get A because we already have B anyway, and I think a lot of fans agree.
How will this impact the fans?
If there's one issue that is certain to be addressed within a few years, it's the expectation for two fan bases to travel to three neutral sites consecutively. We’re not talking about a two-hour drive but flights to major destinations. New Orleans. Pasadena. Miami. Phoenix. Most fans do not have that kind of disposable income to make three straight trips like that. I would anticipate a push for quarterfinal games staged at home campuses where the infrastructure already is in place.