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Greg Sankey: 24-team playoff could surpass âtipping point'
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Greg Sankey: 24-team playoff could surpass âtipping point'
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. â Greg Sankey isnât running from the scheduling challenges SEC football teams face in their quest to win the College Football Playoff championship.
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How long has the FCS been playing a 24-team playoff after an 11-12 game regular season?
Answer: A long frickin time. It works. It's exciting. Just ask my favorite Montana State Bobcats who may repeat as FCS Champs this coming season. After my alumni Dawgs, those Cats are my team. And guess what - their player's bodies get just as much of a beating as players in the FBS.
If you look at the 2025 CFP Final rankings the worst record in the Top 24 teams is 8-4 (Iowa). Most teams have only 2-3 losses. Will an expanded playoff dilute/diminish the regular season? I don't think so, because you have so few cross-conference games now other than your normal end-of-season rivals like GT. The matchups in the playoffs will have some overlap within conferences, but anything outside of that will probably be a new matchup. In an expanded playoff you will also have less players opting out of a probable non-CFP bowl game as well, because their team is now going to be IN the playoffs instead of outside in a non-CFP bowl game.
We all know this is all about money, and that will ultimately decide it's going to be 24 teams in the expanded playoffs, getting rid of the Conference Championship games (and out of the contract to play it), and moving the season start back to Week 0.
I'll tell you a bigger problem that needs addressing:
Why do teams that are 6-6 and even sometimes 5-7 get invited to Bowl games? Why do they even deserve the invitation? Why do we have SO many worthless bowl games? Do we really need 40+ bowls? Hopefully, some of those bowl games will be moved to be included in an expanded playoffs. But, in any case, the real "dilution" that will be going on in an expanded playoff will be the further irrelevance and non-interest in any non-CFP bowls remaining.
Exciting to a few, amusing to some, waste of air time to most.
@PeterA….you mean those non-CFP bowl games, right? Totally agree.
This is why going toa 9 game conference schedule then having an SEC championship game makes no sense.
@DMVDawg…The SEC had to go to a 9-game schedule, because the B1G was at 9-games. The SEC needed to be on a level playing field before discussing expanding the playoffs and potentially getting rid of CC games. Those CC games for all conferences will most likely be going away if they can negotiate out of their contracts.
The playoff is going to expand, that's just reality. The only question is 16 or 24 teams and when it happens. I think any expansion will doom the CC games across the league.
I believe one perception issue is comparing to March madness where the teams play 30+ regular season games then a tournament for the conference championship THEN the playoffs. Totally different in scheduling and player availability and grind in the body. Even with comparing to the FCS which has a great playoff model, they don’t have as many marquee or rivalry games throughout the regular season. Sure a 24 game playoff is good for business, but is it good for college football.
also you have to look at live ticket sales. Another conference game is going to sell more than another paycheck game. But because the playoff committee refuses to reward teams that schedule tough, those remaining home games will forever be paycheck games.
@MontanaDawg - I thought FCS was 16 teams. I’ll look it up.
You got it right! Forgive me doubting you. Pretty sure it used to be 16 though.😊
Sure. And so will be the first rounders in a 24-team playoff
"Sankey, like Smart, agrees there could come a point where having too many teams in the CFP diminishes the regular season."
It's wild that they're talking like that hasn't already happened.
No matter where you set the number, the only potential for late-season excitement will pertain to teams playing around that cutoff, trying to determine who's in and who's out. We've always had that at the top of the sport, where the battles were being played out by the best teams in the country. Now we're watching like, oooh who's gonna be the 11th and 12th best team?? It's objectively not as interesting.
For all of college football history (or at least in my lifetime), being ranked has been the cutoff for being considered a decent team. Now we're talking about making it the standard to play for a championship. But it's comforting to know that the sport's power brokers are wise to the fact that it "could" water down the whole game. We sure are in good hands.
@JBMDawg46…FCS has been at 24-teams since 2013…so a pretty long time. It was 16-teams before that all the way back to the 90s.
@PeterA…But I almost guarantee you will have more eyes on those games as playoff games than as non-CFP bowl games that have a bunch of teams with opt-outs.
Then you have Notre Dame who plays a cupcake schedule and gets in the CFP without playing a conference championship game
A 24-team College Football Playoff sounds inclusive. It would actually be corrosive.
College football’s greatest product is not the playoff. It is the regular season. Every Saturday matters because the margin for error is brutally small. A bad September loss can haunt you. A November rivalry game can wreck you. A conference title game can define you.
A 24-team playoff dulls that blade.
At 24 teams, the sport stops asking, “Who earned a shot at the national title?” and starts asking, “Who else can we squeeze into the bracket?” That is a dangerous shift. The 21st-, 22nd-, 23rd-, and 24th-ranked teams are rarely true championship teams. They are usually good teams with obvious flaws, multiple losses, and missed opportunities.
That is not access. That is forgiveness.
The current 12-team format already fixes the old problem. It gives conference champions a path. It gives elite at-large teams a second chance. It creates campus playoff games. It keeps the regular season meaningful. Going to 24 is not reform. It is bloat.
It would also weaken already weakened conference championships. Why risk everything in Atlanta, Indianapolis, Charlotte, or Arlington if half the contenders are already safely in? The games that once crowned leagues would become seeding events. Rivalries would lose some of their terror. Upsets would lose some of their consequence.
And the calendar would become ridiculous. College football is not basketball. You cannot play three games in five days and call it January Madness. Football requires recovery. It punishes bodies. A 24-team bracket would pile more games onto athletes already managing NIL, the portal, coast-to-coast travel, and academic obligations.
Worse, it would encourage weaker scheduling. Why play a heavyweight nonconference game if 9-3 still gets you in? Programs would learn the lesson quickly: survive, avoid risk, protect the résumé.
A national championship should be exclusive. The four-team playoff was too tight. The 12-team playoff is a reasonable correction. But 24 teams turns the postseason into inventory. College football does not need more bracket space. It needs more consequence.
A 24-team playoff would not strengthen the sport. It would sand down everything that makes it matter.
Personally, eight is enough.
For all you whiners out there (including The Athletic's Stewart Mandel), you'd better just get used to the thought of a 16 or most likely 24 team playoff. It's going to happen sooner rather than later. Money drives this sport, and that will make this decision (just like the ridiculous decision to a March Madness 72-team field).