In a landscape-altering move, the College Football Playoff is officially expanding to a 24-team format for the 2027 season, sources told CBS Sports.
The field will be constructed with a “19+4+1” model with 19 at-large bids, four reserved for the Power Four champions and one for the highest-rated Group of Six champion. The first and second round matches would be played on campus. Quarterfinal and semifinal games will continue to be played in traditional bowls like the Sugar Bowl, Rose Bowl and Cotton Bowl.
The move to 24 teams, long expected as a formality in college football circles, will eliminate popular and lucrative conference championship games. The SEC introduced the conference championship game in 1992, and it has been a significant annual source of revenue for the conference, on the order of $100 million. Last year, the Alabama-Georgia SEC Championship averaged 16.9 million viewers, the seventh most-watched game of the season. The SEC announced Monday that its 2026 conference title game will be its last.
Another important change: the Heisman Trophy ceremony will be moved up a week to the first weekend in December. In 2027, this will take place on the weekend of December 3-5. With no conference title games, there will be an open week following the conclusion of the regular season, the last weekend in November. The PSC will then start the first full week of December.
The CFP is currently in its third year of the 12-team playoff format. Next year will mark the start of a double peloton of 24 teams.
Playoff expansion has seemed inevitable for some time now. The only question was how many teams would be included. The Big Ten and SEC had control over the future format but weren’t always on the same page on numbers. SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey publicly supported a 16-team playoff, but ultimately accepted the Big Ten’s preferred 24-team format. The ACC, Big 12 and independent powerhouse Notre Dame also supported a 24-team format.
While the 24-team playoff format hasn’t been particularly popular with fans so far, the hope around the idea is that it will get more fans invested in the playoff race and late-season games. This is better access to the playoffs, rather than a significant financial boon for the conferences. Brandon Marcello of CBS Sports previously reported that the CFP could offer an additional $320 million on top of the current contract, which averages $1.2 billion per year.
“The decision to expand was driven by a desire to increase opportunities for FBS programs, student-athletes and fans to participate in the playoffs and have a chance to play for the CFP national championship, while new scheduling standards incentivize institutions to schedule more compelling non-conference games during the regular season,” the College Football Playoff said in a statement. “The expanded format will include 16 playoff games on campus, bringing playoff football to more students and local fans while positively impacting campus communities.”
The CFP debuted in a four-team format at the end of the 2014 season, with Ohio State winning the national championship. A decade later, in 2024, the playoffs were expanded to 12 teams, and Ohio State was once again the first team to make the larger bracket.
How the Big Ten and SEC got to 24 teams
The move toward a 24-team College Football Playoff follows more than a year of debate and negotiations, with the sport’s two most powerful conferences initially advocating different approaches.
The Big Ten pushed for a 24-team field, while SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey favored a 12- or 16-team structure that would preserve his conference’s championship game. At one point, the Big Ten pushed a model based on guaranteed automatic qualifiers, distributed primarily among the power conferences. It was successful for a while before a 16-team format of 5 automatic bids + 11 at-large teams became the most popular format among college sports executives.
Last January, at the site of the national championship game in Miami, CBS Sports reported that the ACC, Big 12 and SEC all preferred a 16-team format. This changed over time and at the annual conference meetings in May, the ACC and Big 12 now preferred a 24-team playoff. The SEC was the only dissenter from the power conference.
The breakthrough came in September, when the two leagues agreed to evaluate the larger bracket. Sankey had outlined the key prerequisites in a memo: compensating for lost revenue from SEC championship games and requiring at least 10 regular-season games against power conference opponents. The SEC’s move to nine conference games — and public and private complaints about it from some of its most prominent coaches — appear to play a role in the conference being more open to a 24-team format. With 20 spots now up for grabs, it will be considerably easier for three- or even four-loss SEC teams to qualify.
Once the SEC indicated its openness to the larger format, it was only a matter of time before it became a reality.
Why replacing conference championship revenue was essential
Expanding to 24 teams required making room on the schedule, putting conference championship games — and the revenue they generate — at the center of negotiations.
CFP executives expected to seek about $70 million to $80 million more than the combined value of those championship games of nearly $250 million, sources familiar with the process told CBS Sports. This brings the potential additional annual rights to more than $320 million, on top of ESPN’s existing deal, which averages $1.3 billion per year. ESPN’s position made the negotiations particularly consequential. The network already owns the rights to the ACC, Big 12 and SEC championship games. Industry sources said ESPN could redirect those rights toward an expanded playoff deal. Disney Advertising also manages official corporate sponsorship packages for the ACC and SEC.
The Army-Navy maintains an autonomous window
Amid all the upheaval and changes that come with doubling the playoff field, one thing doesn’t change: The Army-Navy game won’t have to compete with playoff games on the same day. However, it will move forward one week in 2027 to anticipate the playoffs which are scheduled to begin on Thursday, December 9.
The 2027 Army-Navy game was originally scheduled for December 11 and will now take place on December 4. Thu. The annual game between the two military academies, broadcast on CBS/Paramount+, is one of the most beloved college football traditions. Preserving the game’s ability to shine in a standalone location was critically important, so much so that President Trump signed an executive order in March to secure the game’s exclusive window.
“We are also extremely grateful to the PSC leadership for their collaboration,” Navy AD Michael Kelly said in a statement. “Finding a way to preserve America’s Game’s exclusive broadcast window while ensuring our program has a legitimate path to the College Football Playoff is a tremendous outcome for our student-athletes and fans across the country.”
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