The format details arrived Thursday, and they are worse than the number.
ESPN’s Pete Thamel and CBS Sports’ Matt Zenitz each reported that the College Football Playoff is closing in on a deal to expand to 24 teams beginning with the 2027 season. Buried inside that is the part that actually reshapes the sport: conference championship games would likely be eliminated.
“They’re gonna be gone,” CBS Sports’ John Talty said of them.
Twenty-Three At-Large Bids and One Door for Everyone Else
Per CBS Sports, the format under discussion is 23 at-large teams plus one guaranteed spot for the Group of Six. No automatic bids for conference champions.
Read that again. In a 24-team field, winning your league guarantees you nothing, and 23 of the 24 spots go to a selection committee.
The expanded first round and a new second round would be played on campus, with the New Year’s Six bowls hosting quarterfinals and semifinals. Discussions have also included moving Army-Navy from the second to the first Saturday in December.
This Is a Money Problem Dressed as a Format
ESPN’s current deal is six years and $7.8 billion through the 2031-32 season, and it already covers up to 14 teams at no additional cost. The CFP is finalizing a deal with ESPN to buy the extra games through 2031, matching that contract length.
Conference title games are worth roughly $250 million combined. CFP executives were expected to seek $70 to $80 million above that to offset the loss, pushing the added annual fee past $320 million.
So the leagues are being paid to delete their own championship games. Current revenue shares run about 29 percent each to the Big Ten and SEC, roughly 17 percent to the ACC and 15 percent to the Big 12, with the Group of Six and Notre Dame splitting the rest.
Who Wanted This
The Big Ten pushed for 24. Greg Sankey had backed a 12- or 16-team field that preserved the SEC championship game, and his stated prerequisites were offsetting the lost title-game revenue and requiring at least 10 regular-season games against power-conference opponents.
Both leagues agreed in September to evaluate the larger bracket. The Big Ten and SEC hold final authority, and the deadline is December 1.
The 30-day exclusive negotiating window with ESPN expired October 9 without a deal. The CFP said October 10 that talks were continuing, and the window was extended five business days. That extension is what produced Thursday’s reporting.
The 12-Team Playoff Lasted Three Years
The 12-team format debuted in 2024. If this goes through, it will have covered 2024, 2025 and 2026 and then been replaced.
Three seasons. That is how long the sport’s last structural compromise survived before the two richest conferences decided to double it.
The 2026 season currently underway still uses 12 teams, so nothing changes about this Saturday. Everything changes about the Saturdays after it.
What Gets Lost
Championship Saturday is the best day on the college football calendar that does not involve a playoff game. Four or five conference titles decided in four or five hours, with teams playing because the game itself was the prize.
Replacing it with a first round of 24 at-large selections, chosen by committee, is a trade of meaning for inventory. There is no on-the-record quote from Sankey, CFP executive director Rich Clark or any commissioner in Thursday’s reporting, which is itself worth noting. This is being negotiated, not announced.
It is also being negotiated on a December 1 clock by the two conferences that will take 58 percent of the money.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.