With College Football Playoff deadline approaching, leaders torn on 20plus team format Ross Dellenger October 24, 2025 at 10:14 PM 0 From his basketball media day on Wednesday, Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark made the most news by answering a football question.
- - With College Football Playoff deadline approaching, leaders torn on 20-plus team format
Ross Dellenger October 24, 2025 at 10:14 PM
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From his basketball media day on Wednesday, Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark made the most news by answering a football question.
Would you support a 20-plus team College Football Playoff format that grants an equal amount of automatic berths to each of the four power conferences?
"I'm all ears," he told a room full of media members.
The latest playoff proposal that some Big Ten athletic directors are socializing — a mega-field with four autobids per power league and a big at-large pool — hasn't been at the top of agendas within conference administrator meetings. In fact, some leagues — like the SEC — have held little or no formal discussion about the plan. Others, like the Big 12, have discussed it some. ACC administrators, from in-person meetings this week, only glazed over playoff format.
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Roughly a month before a deadline to decide on playoff expansion for the 2026 season, the four power conference commissioners and their league officials appear no closer to a resolution on expansion. In fact, from his hoops media day this week, Yormark said he doesn't envision college leaders making changes by the Dec. 1 deadline and that any change would take effect in 2027.
There's something else, too: The group of power conference athletic directors that Big Ten administrators are working to create hasn't yet been assembled (and, perhaps, it won't be?).
It's just another sign that the 2026 postseason will remain unchanged: a 12-team field with automatic qualifiers for the five highest-ranked conference champions plus seven at-large teams.
And maybe that's not so bad, suggested SEC commissioner Greg Sankey over the summer.
"It can stay [at 12] if we don't agree," he deadpanned.
But remaining status quo appeases few of those around the sport who are itching for expansion at a time when talent is more evenly distributed than ever. Absent from college football's 100-plus-year history, parity seems to be creeping into the sport with changes to player movement and compensation.
That means more losses for everyone, fewer dominant teams and much tighter games. In fact, there are fewer undefeated power conference programs through Week 8 of a season (five) since 2021 (also five).
What will the College Football Playoff look like in the future? David Rosenblum/Getty Images) (Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
There are other stats that back up this newfound parity, according to research from the data analytics platform TrueMedia. Entering this weekend, games between power league programs have been decided by an average of 14.2 points — on pace to be the lowest figure in any season since 2009. A whopping 43% of power conference football games have been decided by one score, which is on pace to be the highest percentage in any season in the last 20 years.
"Our margins are smaller. Margins are tight everywhere," Georgia head coach Kirby Smart said.
The new 10-2 in college football may be 8-4. The new 12-0? Perhaps 10-2, which was the record last year of eventual national champion Ohio State at the end of the regular season.
The point is, more than ever more teams are capable of winning a national title — a reason that expansion is on everybody's mind, even if executives of the sport can't come to an agreement on a specific model.
"Sixteen teams is the way we should go," Notre Dame athletic director Pete Bevacqua told Dan Patrick last week. Bevacqua holds one of 11 seats on a CFP governing committee that makes such decisions (the other 10 are the FBS conference commissioners).
Bevacqua expounded on his answer, detailing what's called a "5+11" format that grants autobids to the five highest-ranked conference champions and at-large spots to 11 other teams. The 5+11 format has been accepted by 10 of the 11 members of the CFP governing committee.
The Big Ten is the lone dissenting vote. It's a big one. As part of an agreement that the conferences and Notre Dame entered last spring, the SEC and Big Ten control future format decisions. Both must agree on a format before it moves forward in the voting process.
"There is almost unanimity in that feeling [of 5+11]. I hope that's where we end up," Bevacqua said. "I think it's the best thing for college football and the future of college football. You want every team going into their first game and saying, 'Hey, we go 11-1 or 12-0 and schedule tough opponents, we can earn our way in there.' Nobody wants a head start."
The "head start" referenced here is the Big Ten's former proposal to grant more automatic qualifiers to the SEC and Big Ten (4 each) than the Big 12 and ACC (2) — a format that, while supported by many SEC athletic directors, was rejected by the conference's coaches in May as well as by Big 12 and ACC administrators.
That's put playoff discussions at a stalemate.
Big Ten athletic directors have filled the void by now socializing a 24-team, "4-4-4-4-2-6" format that would grant the same number of automatic qualifiers to each of the four leagues, two spots to the best two teams within the six non-power leagues and six at-large selections. As with Yormark, ACC commissioner Jim Phillips has expressed, publicly and privately, that his league would favor a format with the same number of automatic qualifiers for each power conference.
However, the concept has been met with pushback, specifically from the SEC, where league presidents and administrators balk at such a high number of playoff teams, fearing that it may impact the value of the regular season, eliminate the conference's valuable championship game and give unworthy teams (i.e.: Big 12 and ACC third- and fourth-place teams) an automatic berth.
"They aren't deserving of that," quips one SEC school official.
The counterargument from the Big Ten is simple. Such a format reduces the role of a subjective human selection process, give more teams a chance into the field, incentivizes the scheduling of bigger non-conference games in the regular season and increases the value of November games as more programs remain in the playoff race.
"I want more teams to feel like they're chasing that opportunity to compete for a national championship," Big Ten commissioner Tony Pettiti said over the summer. "Teams can get hot late in the season. The fact they lose a game early shouldn't disqualify them. To play more meaningful conference games as late as possible."
Commissioners aren't the only ones voicing their opinions on the playoff.
Eric Shanks, the chief executive officer of Fox Sports, recently swung his public support behind a 24-team model. Of note: ESPN owns the sole broadcasting rights for the 11-game College Football Playoff for the next seven years.
"I'm very much in favor of expanding the CFP. I don't see any reason why the CFP can't be 24 teams," Shanks said. "You can fit it into the schedule. You can have automatic qualifiers from the different conferences. There's a good model to expand the playoff and still allow some of the Group of Five to be able to get in. That would give the CFP the opportunity to have more networks involved."
So, what now?
There are no CFP committee meetings scheduled in the near future and the working group of athletic directors hasn't yet been assembled. Meanwhile, on the field, college football continues to prove that, perhaps, more than 12 or 16 teams are worthy of competing for it all in a parity-filled environment.
Or, maybe not?
There is a "balance," said Bevacqua, that must be struck to "protect the integrity and importance" of the regular season.
After all, he said, "There's no sport where the regular season games are more important than college football."
Source: "AOL Sports"
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