The College Football Playoff is officially expanding to 24 teams after reaching a new deal with ESPN, setting the sport on course for yet another new era.
The CFP Management Committee voted unanimously Monday to expand the current 12-team playoff to 24 teams starting next season, marking the second expansion in four years of what was originally a four-team field. ESPN has officially acquired exclusive rights to the new 24-team playoff, adding the 12 additional games to its existing slate of 11.
The expansion will necessitate the elimination of the conference championship games, with each of the “Power 4” conferences — the Big Ten, SEC, ACC and Big 12 — announcing Monday that the upcoming editions of their title games will be the last.
According to multiple reports Monday, the new deal is worth $1.7 billion total, or $345 million/year, with nearly half of that being returned to ESPN as compensation for the cancellation of its conference title games in the SEC, ACC and Big 12. (Fox, which owns rights to the Big Ten title game, will reportedly receive $50 million per year.) That is in addition to the $1.3 billion/year ESPN was already paying for the playoff.
What is now conference championship weekend will, starting next season, feature the Army-Navy Game and Heisman Trophy Presentation. Moving up a week allows Army-Navy to retain its standalone window and either team to play in the playoff should they qualify.
The following week will feature opening round playoff games, with the bottom third of the field visiting the middle third on campus sites. The highest-seeded team playing on that opening weekend will be #9.
The second round will take place the week after, with the opening round winners playing the top third of the field, again on campus sites. The new format marks the first time that the top seeded teams in college football will host playoff home games.
Both the first and second rounds will be contested Thursday-Saturday. The second round will occupy the same weekend as the current first round, meaning that any Saturday games will conflict with the NFL — which has continued to play games on the third Saturday in December (the first Saturday on which it is legally permitted to schedule games under the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961) since the 12-team CFP expansion two years ago.
The remainder of the playoff will be as under the current format, with quarterfinal and semifinal games at one of the “New Year’s Six” bowls and the National Championship continuing to take place at the end of January.
ESPN will have the option to sublicense the additional games it has acquired, on top of its existing sublicensing deal with TNT Sports. Under the new deal, ESPN has agreed to carry a minimum of three games each during the first and second rounds on ABC, plus previously agreed-to simulcasts of one quarterfinal, one semifinal and the National Championship. That will bring the total number of CFP games on the broadcast network to at least nine per year.
So far, ABC has aired just four total playoff games since the CFP began in the 2014-15 season, all of them being first round games the past two seasons.
TNT Sports already owns rights to two first round games, two quarterfinals and one semifinal as part of its sublicensing agreement with ESPN, which expires in 2028. It was not clear whether the TNT “first round” games will revert to the new first round or remain on their current weekend (which will now be the second round).
That leaves eight total windows, all in the first or second round, for ESPN to either keep for itself or sublicense at least a portion elsewhere.
The 24-team format was initially met with opposition when first floated by Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti, but steadily overcame those hurdles over the past few months. The expansion is just the latest change to college football, which has undergone a rapid transformation in this decade with the previous 12-team expansion, conference realignment, ‘name, image and likeness,’ and the transfer portal reshaping the sport.
