The Big Ten is circulating an internal document that lays out what a 24-team College Football Playoff would look like, including the elimination of conference championship games, a 23+1 selection model and an additional weekend of on-campus CFP home games.
With the College Football Playoff format remaining at 12 for the 2026 season, the drumbeat of potential CFP change will inevitably echo through the coming season. The document, obtained by ESPN, includes other interesting details, such as the committee being tasked with not having any rematches in the first round.
The sides of the potential expansion issue were drawn clear in recent weeks. The SEC was willing to go to a 16-team format, and the Big Ten was willing to grow to 16 only with an agreement to eventually go to 24 teams. Those two leagues essentially control the CFP decision-making, hence the stalemate.
The Big Ten internal document details what the conference has termed a “24 team CFP Format Compromise.” Sources told ESPN it has been distributed to the league’s athletic directors and a working group of head coaches.
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While the document presents nothing formal or official in terms of the future of the College Football Playoff, it does begin to unpack the vision of the 24-team format.
The idea has increased in conversation among coaches and athletic directors in the Power 4 leagues, as the coaches acknowledge a playoff-or-bust pressure and athletic directors want more postseason opportunities to justify rapidly increasing roster expenses.
The internal document begins by offering a potential timeline desired by the Big Ten, which wants the format to grow to a 16-team playoff for 2027 and 2028. The document indicates a move to 24 for “no later than the 2029 season,” which would then run through the end of the current CFP contract, which goes through 2031. From there, there would be a new television contract and further flexibility to change.
In the proposed 16-team format, there would be five automatic qualifiers and 11 at-large teams, an idea that has been widely discussed. The top two teams would get byes, and the opening games — No. 16 vs. No. 13 and No. 14 vs. No. 15 — would be played on the second weekend in December, likely slotting around the annual Army vs. Navy game.
There would be six second-round games on campus and four quarterfinals at traditional bowl locations on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. That would be followed by semifinal games at bowl sites and the national title game, which would be played around mid-January.
The 24-team format would consist of the 23 best teams and one spot for the Group of 6. There would be no automatic qualifiers, which had been a point of emphasis for the Big Ten in CFP discussions last year. If the field grows to 24, sources have indicated that automatic qualifiers would matter less to the Big Ten.
(According to the document, the breakdown for this field if it had played out in 2025 would have been seven SEC teams, six Big Ten, five Big 12, three ACC, two Group of 6 and Notre Dame.)
The top eight teams would receive byes. There would be eight first-round games on campus and then an extra week of home games with eight second-round games played on campus. That would mean all the top teams would be rewarded with a playoff home game, which has been considered a flaw of the current system. No. 1 Indiana, for example, didn’t play a home game in last season’s CFP.
The “optimal window” to start the 24-team playoff would be the second weekend in December, which would have Friday and Saturday away from any NFL competition. It would address the long rest period that has emerged early in the 12-team playoff model; teams with byes and extended layoffs went 1-7 the first two years of the CFP.
The quarterfinals would fall on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day at bowl sites, and the semifinals would be the following week at bowl sites. That would be followed by a mid-January title game at a neutral site.
In this proposed 24-team model, the preference is that no regular-season rematches would be permitted in the first round, but games between league foes could be played if they didn’t meet in the regular season.
This transition to a 24-team format would include the elimination of conference title games, and the incremental timeline to get to 24 teams in 2029 would give “appropriate remedies” for moving away from them.
The internal document gives a window into how the Big Ten views the conference title games, calling them “artificial” and saying that leagues that play them take on “way more risk” than those that don’t and still advance to the CFP.
How the CFP would handle making up for the cost of losing the conference title games would be one of the biggest looming issues. The Power 4 championship games have media value of at least $200 million, and that figure represents only a television valuation. It doesn’t account for the tens of millions the games generate with tickets, sponsorships and game-day sales.
The financial trick of a 16-game playoff if the sport were to eventually divorce itself from conference title games is that it would add four games, only two of which would be up for bid to bring in new money. (The current contract accounts for ESPN owning the added games up to 14 teams.)
Essentially, there’s no way to make up the financial delta from losing the league title games.
Moving to a 24-team model would mean 10 additional games up for bid. There would be 23 total games, up from 11 in the 12-team format. ESPN would own two of the 12 new games, so only 10 would go out for open bid.
The document includes some rationale behind the move. It stresses the “sustained interest” of a longer playoff and prioritizes home games on campus and the elimination of risk of injury in conference championship games, citing Hoosiers quarterback Fernando Mendoza’s injury scare in the Big Ten title game.
The Big Ten document stresses the uptick in relevant regular-season games, saying: “In today’s transfer portal/player movement era, teams may lose a game or two early and gel together later in the season — more playoff opportunities late provides an appropriate safety net.”
