College Football Playoffs Set To Expand To 24 Teams Starting In 2027

There's been rumblings over the last several months about the push to expand the College Football Playoffs. The CFP was first introduced back in 2014 and featured four teams, Ohio State, Oregon, Alabama and Florida State. The Buckeyes would go onto win and the four-team playoff model would carry us through the 2023 season. Then at the start of the 2024 season, the 12-team playoff model was introduced. Many thought that this would be a stepping stone to 'larger things' and as of this morning, that hypothesis was proven to be correct. 

Heather Dinich at ESPN reported this morning that the College Football Playoffs and ESPN have inked a five-year, nearly $1.7 billion deal that expands the playoff field to 24 teams with ESPN being their continued broadcast partner as they have been through the four-team and 12-team playoff model. With the expanded playoffs, that brings about several changes to the college football regular season slate. 

First and foremost, the regular season will now begin on 'Week 0' which is the week before Labor Day and will continue through Thanksgiving weekend like it does now, likely giving teams an additional bye week. The other massive change the 24-team playoff will bring is the elimination of conference championship games since 'Selection Sunday' is being moved to the Sunday after Thanksgiving. One cool addition with the 24-team playoff model is that the Army-Navy game will have its own standalone game on what was formerly known as 'Championship Weekend.' 

As far as the playoff field is concerned, it will feature 19 at-large bids with the Power 4 conference champions being determined by each league. It will also include the highest ranked Group of 6 team as well. The top eight teams in the field will all receive first round byes setting up matchups between No. 9 and No. 24, No. 10 and No. 23, so on and so forth down the line. The first two rounds of games will be held at the campus of the higher seed with the actual playoff beginning the second week of December in 2027. The old NY6 Bowls (Rose, Cotton, Peach, Orange, Fiesta, Sugar) will still be tied into the quarterfinal and semifinals matchups.

For the Notre Dame impact, they will no longer receive the 'guaranteed spot' if ranked inside of the playoff field in the final rankings as indicated in this year's MOU, but as history has shown us, that won't have a significant impact in their playoff hopes. Since the start of the playoff era (2014) the Irish would have made the College Football Playoffs ever year in a 24-team field with the exceptions of 2014 and 2016 where they were unranked coming into Selection Sunday. 

In 2015, 2018, 2020, 2021 and 2024 they would have received first-round byes. In 2017 they would have been at home against Oklahoma State. In 2019, the Irish would have hosted Minnesota in the first round. In 2022, they would have been on the road against No. 12 Washington. In 2023 they would have hosted Iowa and this past season, 2025, they would have hosted Georgia Tech in South Bend. 

Notre Dame Athletic Director Pete Bevacqua and head coach Marcus Freeman have both expressed their thoughts on playoff expansion and both have vocalized support for this new model that we'll see starting in 2027. In college sports, change is inevitable and with $1.7 billion dollars on the line, that process tends to get sped up. The 12-team playoff format will come to an end at the end of the 2026 season and the Irish are in prime spot to host after defeating the No. 1 team in the country this past weekend. 

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