The College Football Playoff Is Going to 24 Teams. ESPN Paid $1.7 Billion for More

The College Football Playoff is expanding to 24 teams starting in 2027, under a five-year deal with ESPN worth nearly $1.7 billion. It just went to 12 teams in 2024. At this rate, by 2035 the playoff will include every team in America and a few of the better high schools, and the national champion will be decided by whoever's bus breaks down last.

Here's how it works. The four Power Four champions and the top-ranked Group of Six team get automatic bids, and the selection committee hands out the other 19 spots. The top eight seeds get a bye and then host a second-round game on campus. The quarterfinals, semifinals and title game stay at neutral sites, with the championship set for New Orleans in January 2028. ESPN keeps exclusive rights and can sublicense some of the new games. To be eligible, Power Four schools must play ten games against other Power Four teams, which is the first rule in the history of college football that asks teams to schedule somebody frightening.

And to make room, the Power Four conference championship games are going away. The SEC title game, the Big Ten title game, all of them, gone, so that there's time for more playoff games. Consider the trade. College football is canceling the games people already loved to make room for games people might love, the way a man leaves his wife for a woman he's only seen in a brochure.

Now the selling point is that more teams get a shot. That's true. But here's the trouble with 24. The 23rd and 24th teams are, almost by definition, teams that lost a few games and spent November hoping somebody else lost more. In the old days, a three-loss season got you a bowl in a city with a lot of hotel rooms and a sponsor named after a tire. Now it gets you a road trip to play the No. 9 seed in the snow and a chance to be on ABC losing by 30.

None of this is about fairness. It's about inventory. ESPN paid for more games, and it's getting more games. The schools get more money, which they'll spend on the coaches, who'll get fired, and paid to leave. The players get more games, which they'll play for the honor of the thing and whatever's in their NIL account.

There's an old saying that if everybody gets a trophy, the trophy doesn't mean anything. College football has found a new version: if everybody gets in the playoff, the regular season doesn't mean anything either. But the television deal sure does.