College football playoff doubles to 24 teams, ending conference championships

The college football postseason will double in size beginning with the 2027 season, expanding from 12 teams to 24.

The change eliminates conference championship games for the four major power conferences. Those annual contests have been part of the sport for two or three decades.

NPR sports correspondent Becky Sullivan described the shift as a cementation of a trend that has already diminished the importance of the regular season. She noted that teams capable of winning a national title could lose three or four games during the regular season and still qualify for the playoff.

The new format includes five automatic bids. The winners of the SEC, Big Ten, Big 12, and ACC receive spots, as does the top ranked team from a mid major conference. A selection committee will choose the remaining 19 teams from the pool of eligible schools.

Sullivan predicted that most of those 19 at large bids will go to teams from the major conferences. This outcome would place middle of the pack programs from the Big Ten and SEC into the tournament.

The top eight ranked teams receive a first round bye. The bottom 16 teams play in an initial round of games. The addition of this round necessitated the removal of conference championships to fit the schedule.

Financial drivers underpin the expansion. ESPN reportedly agreed to pay hundreds of millions of dollars more each season for the additional games. This increase is on top of a contract worth more than one billion dollars that the network signed a few years ago.

The expansion aims to help schools raise funds from alumni and donors. Sullivan observed that it has become difficult to justify the high costs of college football, such as player compensation, coaching salaries, and facility upgrades, if a team cannot reach the postseason. The format change also arrives as TV ratings have dropped by about 6 percent overall, with some networks seeing declines of more than 10 percent.