CFP director urges diligence before expanding 12-team format

Talk about College Football Playoff expansion has officially gone off the rails.

Over the weekend, reports emerged that the Big Ten was considering an expansion proposal that would see the CFP move from its current 12-team format to 24 or even 28 teams. The new format, floated after the Big Ten’s initial proposal, features 16 teams with four automatic bids each for the Big Ten and SEC, two apiece for the ACC and Big 12, one slot for the Group of 5, and two at-large spots. However, it hasn’t gained support from other conferences. The 24 or 28-team format would allocate substantially more automatic bids to each power conference.

However, the clock is ticking on implementing any playoff expansion for the 2026 season. Should college football’s power brokers want a new format by 2026, they’ll have to agree by December 1 of this year. That’s not a lot of time to come up with a format that all parties can agree to for the long haul, especially if development on said format is seemingly still in its early stages.

As such, Rich Clark, the executive director of the CFP, is urging all sides to exercise a level of diligence before agreeing to a new format. “I would rather stay at [the 12-team format] than rush to a decision that’s not good,” Clark said, per Seth Emerson of The Athletic. “So if the decision is that we stay at the 12-team playoff until we know more, until we watch that another year, until we can discuss the other options on the table a little bit more, it’s worth sticking to the 12-team until we can come to really a solid, sound decision for the future.”

Clark certainly isn’t ruling out the 24 or 28-team mega-format, however. “The thing I like about it is it’s another idea,” Clark said. “And as many ideas as we can get on the table and really have the discussion now, so that we’re not doing something later — that we go ‘I wish we had thought of this, or wish we thought of that.’ That’s not what we want. So if there’s an idea that comes out, we want it on the table. We want to be able to discuss it.”

That said, Clark sees no reason to rush the process. If the conferences cannot agree on a format by December, nothing is stopping them from going back to the drawing board and agreeing on a new format for 2027. “Maybe it’s that we put it off a year and we make a decision later, or maybe we decide that the 12-team is here to stay,” he said. “I really can’t say. We’ve got to have a deep discussion about this, like we have the other options, and we’ll figure out our way ahead.”