CFP reportedly expanding to 24 teams in 2027

Expansion killed the sport for me. I’m not only talking about playoff expansion; I’m also talking about conference expansion. 24 teams making the playoff is too many in my eyes but even worse to me are 18 team conferences.

College football was about the rivalries, the history, the pageantry, the tradition; but now all it seems to emphasize is giving everyone a shot at the playoff and a chance for the national championship. I used to enjoy college football more than the NFL but that is no longer the case anymore, partly due to the Lions being good for once, but primarily due to the changes made in the college landscape.

My view is largely based on emotion and personal preference instead of logic, but to me college football was emotional. It’s why it was special. It was unique. It wasn’t like professional sports where the championship was the prize. Beating your rival, winning your bowl game, winning your conference were huge achievements for teams but today they don’t feel like they matter much since it isn’t a national title. That’s a problem with “ring culture” as a whole. I primarily see it in the NBA which is more reasonable since there are only five starters per team but it is still a stupid idea in my eyes. Yes winning the national championship is the ultimate prize; however, you can still have a successful season without it. With the CFP expansion to 24 teams, it feels like more and more teams will adopt a playoff or bust mentality.

The regular season is what made college football special to me. Every week mattered and every loss mattered. To have a chance at a title, you truly needed to be the best. It was different than other sports, in pro sports the best team is not the champion a lot of the time. The 2007 Patriots for example went 16-0 in the regular season but lost to the Giants in the Super Bowl. That works for the NFL, that’s how the NFL is. But college football has always been about the regular season, there used to not even be a national championship game, but once there was it was between only the best teams. The team crowned champion was still almost always the best team. Then it went to four teams for the playoff in 2014 which still was good at deciding who the best team was for the most part. There is a little more room for upsets at four teams but for the most part, there are four teams that are good enough to contend for a championship each year. But with having 5 power conferences, if all the conference champions had a great year, someone would be left out. This was clear in 2023 when Michigan was 13-0, Washington was 13-0, Texas was 12-1, Alabama was 12-1, and Florida State was 13-0. All of them won their conference championships but Florida State was out after they lost their starting QB to an injury. They did get killed in their bowl game by 12-1 Georgia, who was another great team but they lost in the SEC title game and finished sixth in the last CFP ranking, but that’s not the point. They were deserving of making the playoff but they did not since they were deemed the least worthy of the five power conference champions. Overall though, most years had all the deserving teams in. During the four team era, no team that lost two or more games ever made it. The regular season was still rewarded and so were conference championships. Winning mattered most and the teams that had great regular seasons were rewarded. Other good teams still got to play bowl games but those already began to seem less important.

Then the playoff expanded to 12 which to me was a huge jump from 4. I think I would have gone to 6 or 8 teams if expansion was necessary. This would allow teams like 2014 Baylor and TCU to make it, 2017 Wisconsin, and 2023 Florida State and Georgia to make it. This still would still keep it exclusive to great teams and I think an 8 team format with the 5 power conference winners, the top group of five team and two at-large bids could have been great. Instead they went for 12. I know in the first two years of the 12 team playoff, a team seeded 8 or lower has made the championship both times, with the 8 seed winning it in 2024. That is not my point though. I know there are teams left out that are playing great football at the end of the year and are capable of going on a run, but that does not mean I think they even deserved to have a chance in the first place. To be crowned champion used to be reserved for the best of the best which I think should reflect the entire season. Two loss teams are capable of knocking off top opponents, but I don’t think two loss teams should be playing for a chance at the title to begin with. You can be a great team with two losses, but to me you aren’t the best. You lost twice. How are you the best? You might have finished the season strongest, but your overall body of work wasn’t the best. To me that really is shown by 2024 Ohio State. They won it all but they finished the regular season 10-2, lost to a mediocre Michigan team to end the year, and finished 4th in their conference standings. That team was not the best team that season. But the loss to Michigan was a wake up call and they went on a great run to win it all. I’m not saying they weren’t good enough, I just don’t think they were deserving enough to have a chance. Just looking at the CBS sports image below, so many of these schools don’t seem like title contenders yet they’ll have a chance.

What a 24 Team Playoff Would Look Like Right Now (AP Week 7 Poll) : r/CollegeFootballDawgs

I love college basketball and they have a much larger postseason than college football but they’re also different sports. I have a problem with expansion there too but college basketball at least gives autobids to every conference winner. Basketball is also less taxing and is played more frequently so it is easier to have a postseason format with more teams. The entire NCAA tournament for basketball takes about 3 weeks. The CFP already takes a month now that it is at 12 teams and will only take longer once it’s expanded to 24. So yes March Madness has more teams, but at least it gives every conference a chance and takes less time. Though I do have issues with how much power conferences are rewarded in basketball too but that’s a topic for another post. So expanding isn’t wrong as a concept, 24 teams works for the FCS but to me, it stops feeling like college football. It doesn’t need to be like other sports, it was unique and special as it was.

My major issue isn’t even expansion of the playoff, it’s conference realignment and the formation of huge conferences. With conferences in the size of 10-12 teams, it was easy to tell who the best teams were after the regular season and I personally liked the conference championship game. Since you don’t play every team in your conference, not everyone has an equal schedule so it gives you a chance to decide the conference winner between the two best. Teams played similar enough schedules so it made sense. Now with 16-18 team conferences like the SEC and Big Ten, you could play a completely different schedule than other teams in your conference and potentially even have no common opponents. It doesn’t even feel like a conference at that point to me. Two teams could play wildly different schedules now compared to before when they had to be similar. At least before you could figure out pretty easily who the best of the conference was, but now the conferences are so huge that you can have a general idea about who the best is but it won’t be shown purely through results on the field. So an expanded playoff does make sense with the expanded conferences in order to decide who the best is. But for that, conference championships are out the window and rightfully so after how much they’ve been devalued with conference realignment. Expansion makes sense for football with the model that they’ve created. That doesn’t mean I have to like it even if it is logical.

To me, the death of the Pac-12 along with Oklahoma and Texas transitioning to the SEC killed my love for the sport. Oklahoma and Texas leaving the Big 12 led to a 16 team SEC, followed by the death of the Pac-12 leading to an 18 team Big Ten, 18 team Big 12, and a 17 team ACC for football. To me, conferences need to be based on your geographic region to keep the culture and tradition in tact. I need to care about the historic rivalries, I need to care about why these teams hate each other. But now there are California teams in the ACC, the Big Ten is primarily the Midwest but now with four west coast teams, the Big 12 is the entire country at this point besides the east and west coast. So many conference games mean nothing to me now compared to before when almost every game had history behind it. And I know playoff expansion won’t reward the other conferences at all. The playoff will primarily be the SEC and Big Ten invitational. The little guys aren’t going to win a title regardless but if you’re expanding, give them a shot. What’s the point even for Conference USA teams, for MAC teams, for Sun Belt teams, etc. Schools might have a required minimum games against power conference schools. I think that is good for more exciting non conference matchups, but so many smaller schools get a lot of their funding from scheduling power conference matchups. If there are less of those, there is less money and less opportunity for the smaller schools. As it already stands with the transfer portal, these schools lose all their players anyway to top schools. Good for the players but it sucks for the schools. They’ll have good seasons but aren’t able to sustain it since they lose everyone after one good year. So at this point it gets into how I think the transfer portal has also ruined what made college sports so unique. The transfer portal is necessary for the players and what’s best for them, but for me as a fan, it has killed a lot about what made college sports so special. Same with NIL, I do think that is great for the players but I don’t like how it has impacted the on field product.

So in the end, I think conference’s growing, CFP expansion, and to an extent the transfer portal and NIL have killed my enjoyment in college football. You used to truly need to be one of the best to have a chance at the title but you could still have successful seasons otherwise. Now to me I think teams that aren’t deserving will have a chance like 9-3 SEC and Big Ten teams and even an 8-4 team probably. Plus those 24 spots will likely go almost entirely to at large power conference teams. I love college basketball and one great part is seeing the great teams from smaller conferences have their chance vs Goliath. They have a better chance for an upset in basketball than football but at least the little guy has a chance to make the tournament. I don’t think any system they come up with will get me on board for an expanded playoff, but I hope it isn’t basically all power conference teams. I haven’t cared much about the sport since 2023 anyway, I barely watch games in their entirety anymore since the magic is gone to me, but that is my own personal preference.

If you like an expanded playoff, good for you. I think it’s good for mid tier power conference schools to have a chance at a title. However, I feel it makes it feel less like what college football is. It devalues the regular season in a way. Yes a lot of games will matter that didn’t matter much in the grand scheme of things before, but they’ll matter in terms of seeding and seeing which mediocre 9-3 team can get in. More teams in means a lot more schools will get a chance that they’ve never had before, but to me that isn’t what makes college football unique. Expanding the playoff in my opinion makes the sport lose some of it’s individuality and makes it more like any other sport. Thinking back, changing the clock rules for first downs also changed the game for me. You don’t see many shootouts like you did before, in the Big 12 especially, now it is more similar to the NFL and the scores reflect that. So many rules and new changes have gotten rid of individual identities of college football.

This isn’t an argumentative post, this is just my opinion on why I think expansion has led this sport to feeling less unique and losing a lot of the stakes and story it had before. Thinking back on one of the most insane college football moments of my life: Davis’ kick six to win the Iron Bowl, that wouldn’t have knocked Alabama out. It would have been great for Auburn for seeding, but so much of that meaning and excitement is gone. Yes it’s still a great play, but the stakes are so much lower. I liked college football most when the stakes were so high every game and perfection was necessary for the best teams. Now it feels like an NFL-lite to me. So many teams get in and have a shot which works for the NFL but does not mean college football should copy it.

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