Why Expanding the College Football Playoff to 24 Teams Is a Bad Idea

At a time of decisiveness for the United States, credit college football for introducing a plan that can bring some solidarity to our society.

Regardless if you support a program representing the Big Ten, SEC, or any of the eight conferences subject to the Power Two’s whims, everyone can agree expansion of the College Football Playoff to 24 teams is an awful idea.

Use of the term everyone is rhetorical in this context; no idea is ever universally praised nor universally reviled. However, it’s effectively impossible to argue that a 24-team bracket is not a bastardization of why proponents wanted a Playoff system to begin with.

Fan outcry for a postseason tournament grew from the desire to see matchups traditions denied the sport in the more distant past, like Washington-Miami to conclude the 1991 season. The BCS offered some improvement, giving us matchups like Texas-USC in the iconic 2006 Rose Bowl Game.

More BCS seasons ended in championship controversy than not, though. LSU and USC split the BCS and Associated Press titles in 2003, undefeated Auburn was skipped over a year later, and Utah was never even considered for a championship shot in 2004 or 2008.

Utah’s shunning as the sole unbeaten team in all of Div. I football in 2008 provided a key catalyst in making a playoff reality. The threat of antitrust lawsuits failed to earn Boise State a national championship shot in 2009, or TCU in either 2009 or 2010, but the resulting pressure helped make the College Football Playoff happen.

The system has never gotten the formula right, and expansion to 24 entrants is the worst change yet.

The original, four-team bracket proved to be a half-measure; an appeal to both traditionalists who embraced the pageantry of the bowl system and fans seeking a more concrete method of crowning a champion.

The exclusion of co-Big 12 Conference champions Baylor and TCU in the four-team Playoff’s first year set an ominous tone.

Ohio State and Alabama making the bracket in 2016 and 2017 without qualifying for their own conference title games; UCF excluded through consecutive undefeated regular seasons; Cincinnati only qualifying in 2021 thanks to going two regular seasons without losing a game and one of the more chaotic campaigns unfolding around the Bearcats; plenty of evidence surfaced that as a vehicle for determining the most legitimate champion, four teams wouldn’t cut.

How anyone concluded that the solution was to triple the size of the field, and now doubling that just four years later, is gobsmacking.

The 12-team Playoff has had glaring issues from the outset, with first-round games mostly being one-sided snoozers — a direct byproduct of no college football season ever producing 12 teams capable of winning or deserving of competing for the national championship.

A more subjective argument against the 12-team Playoff is its diminished significance of regular-season games. The Oct. 17 slate offers a prime example.

One of the most remarkable Saturdays in recent memory, Week 7 would have marked the end of some brand-name programs’ national title aspirations in years past. In the case of a matchup like Ohio State’s 19-14 win at Indiana, the nail-biting finale could have been the first chapter in a series destined for completion at the Big Ten Championship Game.

Yet, because of the conference bloat that is a direct result of leagues looking to secure as many Playoff bids as possible, the Hoosiers now trail undefeated UCLA. The Bruins are having a terrific season under first-year coach Bob Chesney — but they also happen to miss both the Hoosiers and Buckeyes in the regular season.

Again, this position is more subjective. One could contend that more opportunities to reach the 12-team Playoff creates more high-stakes regular-season games involving more teams.

Extend this philosophy to 24 teams, and the meaning of what constitutes high stakes dilutes. This is especially true if the 24-bid Playoff excludes all conference champions as automatic berths, which is the system the NCAA uses for the Football Championship Subdivision Playoffs.

Using the current format with automatic bids for the four autonomy conference and a designated Group of Six berth, the 2025 season’s playoff would have shaped up as follows:

• Alabama vs. James Madison advances to face No. 8
• Miami vs. Iowa advances to face No. 7 Texas A&M
• Notre Dame vs. Georgia Tech advances to face No. 6 Ole Miss
• BYU vs. Houston advances to face No. 5 Oregon
• Texas vs. Tulane advances to face No. 4 Texas Tech
• Vanderbilt vs. Virginia advances to face No. 3 Georgia
• Utah vs. Michigan advances to face No. 2 Ohio State
• USC vs. Arizona advances to face No. 1 Indiana

The above includes a team in Iowa that lost four regular-season games — one-third of its schedule. The top eight seeds must win four games now instead of three to claim the title, which is also demanding they play another one-third of a season.

Compare that to March Madness, which requires six wins for a title. That’s only about 20 percent or less of a basketball team’s schedule going into the NCAA Tournament.

Meanwhile, the Playoff grew without ever so much as experimenting with an eight-team bracket. The inclusion of eight teams would have addressed even the most convoluted BCS seasons, like 2008, when Florida, Oklahoma, USC, Utah, Texas, Texas Tech and even Boise State all had cases to make for playing in a title game.

For posterity’s sake, an eight-team Playoff in 2025, laid out without automatic bids and only going off of the committee’s final regular-season rankings, would have appeared as follows:

• Indiana vs. Oklahoma
• Georgia vs. Texas A&M
• Ohio State vs. Ole Miss
• Texas Tech vs. Oregon

The above scenario may not be ideal, but would surely have less consensus against it than the upcoming 24-team variety.