College Football Playoff expansion to 24 teams gains support of ACC, Big 12

The College Football Playoff field is trending toward doubling in size in 2027 after ACC commissioner Jim Phillips voiced support for a 24-team field Wednesday.

The ACC’s preference is in line with that of the Big Ten and Big 12, leaving SEC commissioner Greg Sankey as the only Power Four conference leader who favors a 16-team field.

The 12-team field will be used for a third year this season after the SEC and Big Ten — which have ultimate decision-making power over the CFP format — were unable to agree on an expanded format last year.

“Our desire with the coaches and the ADs is 24,” Phillips said at the ACC spring meetings in Amelia Island, Florida. “When you’re leaving national championship-contending teams out of the playoff, you don’t have the right number. We lived through it, we suffered through it with Florida State, when the field was four.

“I know other schools have suffered for it. Notre Dame was a CFP-worthy team last year and you saw what happened to the last team that got invited with Miami.”

Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark, who like Phillips supported the 16-team format last year, also now favors a 24-team field, per an On3 report.

“We like 24, we want 24,” Yormark told On3 on Wednesday. “There are too many teams getting left out and 24 teams provides the type of access that is warranted.

“That being said, we need to do the work around the economics around a 24-team format and make sure we address any unintended consequences.”

Greg Sankey’s take

Sankey, speaking Monday in Birmingham, said additional analysis of alternate formats would be needed.

“The number of teams being 16 is still our focus, (but) we’re open to the conversation,” Sankey said. “There are a lot of ideas out there that have to be supported with analysis and information, not speculation.

“And as important as the college football regular season is, if you can build upon that as well as the postseason, awesome, let’s get to it.”

Sankey pointed out that pro sports have grown in small increments after thorough research and analysis that supported those decisions.

“We’re trying to inform that with research. We’ve done that, from our perspective, with 16,” he said.

“We want to understand, through some analytic support, games that matter in an expanded environment, and games that might not matter.”

Georgia coach Kirby Smart told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in February that he was “certainly” in favor of expanding the playoff field to 16 or 24 teams.

Smart said last week on a podcast with college football analyst Josh Pate that, “I’m a fan of 16 to 24 because of the currency (television inventory) and what we’re measured by as coaches.

“I want to get my team in there, it’s an opportunity, and I want my fanbase to be engaged.”

Smart unsure on expansion number

Smart concedes expanding the playoffs makes some regular season games “less meaningful,” but, he added, regular season games “still matter in the grand scheme of things, especially toward the end of the season.”

Smart pointed out that Miami, led by former Georgia quarterback Carson Beck, was in position to win the CFP championship game against unbeaten and No. 1-ranked Indiana despite having two losses in the regular season.

“I don’t know where that line of demarcation is … we’re at four (teams), and now we’re at 12, and now is it 16, or is 24 too many?” Smart said. “I don’t know where the line is drawn on that because for Miami, who legitimately — I won’t say should have won, but could have won the national championship, they could have won it — they had two losses to teams that are competitive to them in their conference … they had two games they shouldn’t have lost.

“I feel like for 10 years I’ve been here, if you lost two games you shouldn’t lose, you were gone, you were out (of the playoffs), but they (Miami) were good enough to win it.”

Scheduling a challenge for 24-team playoff

Sankey on Monday pointed out some of the issues a 24-team playoff could present.

“Conference championship games still exist, and there are contracts around those for the first week of December, so plenty of opinions about whether they continue or not,” Sankey said.

“Then you’re at Army-Navy week (the second Saturday in December), then you’re at NFL Saturday, and we’ve already infringed upon that, and you can see the impact upon both sides’ ratings, the NFL and college football on that Saturday.

“So where do you fit all the games in?”

The NCAA Division I Oversight Committee recently recommended a standardized start to the college football regular season by shifting Week 1 up to what is currently known as “Week 0” (before Labor Day).

Sankey said the SEC coaches have stressed the importance of two open dates within the season should the “Week 0″ proposal be passed.

SEC football coaches, such as Smart and LSU coach Lane Kiffin, have expressed concern with the inherent risk of player attrition that comes with playing in the SEC title game.

“I’ve talked to other coaches, so I’ll just kind of give you the feeling from some other coaches that, they don’t want to be in it,” Kiffin said in a November 2024 interview reported by the Jackson Clarion Ledger. “You know, the reward to get a bye versus the risk to get knocked out completely. I mean ... that’s a really big risk.”

The SEC has added a ninth conference game to league teams’ regular season schedule since Kiffin’s remarks, leading Smart to suggest the SEC Championship Game might need to be eliminated if the playoffs are expanded beyond 12 teams.

“If it gets to 16 or 24 and we’ve got to move the end of the season up and we’ve got to get everything done by the second week of January, then I’d say it probably has to go,” Smart said after Georgia defeated Alabama 28-7 in the SEC Championship Game in December.

“Those two teams were beat up tonight …. The coaches in our league are concerned about it — very concerned about it. I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t speak my piece and say it’s concerning.”

Big Ten: How a 24-team CFP might look

The Big Ten circulated a proposal in February of what a 24-team playoff format would look like, calling for the elimination of league title games, while including the top 23 teams along with one spot for the top Group of Six school.

Per ESPN sources, under that proposal:

• The playoffs would, in an “optimal window,” begin on the second weekend of December.

• Quarterfinals would remain at bowl sites on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day.

• Semifinals would take place the following week at bowl sites.