In a sport with no one in charge, the only good things happen out of accident and dysfunction.
Such is the case on Friday, when the College Football Playoff is expected to announce it will remain at 12 teams for the 2026 season, according to multiple reports.
The decision -- indecision, really -- comes nearly two months after ESPN imposed a Dec. 1 deadline to set a format for 2026. ESPN is the sole rights-holder of the CFP, though the networks licenses a pair of games to TNT each season.
The Big Ten had pushed for 24 teams, while the SEC and others prefer 16, according to multiple reports. The Big Ten originally preferred a 24-team format with multiple automatic bids for each Power 4 conference, although the number of bids would have varied depending on how powerful those conferences were; the SEC and B1G would have four auto-bids a year, the ACC and Big 12, too. The Big Ten's plan was widely rejected and mocked, and the conference later backed off on the multi-auto bid plan, and in recent weeks signaled it would support 16 as a bridge to 24.
The SEC and others clearly saw through that, and so the format will remain in a stalemated 12 for the time being.
A move to 16 or 24 would have meant that the College Football Playoff would operate under four formats in four seasons:
-- 2023: four teams
-- 2024: 12 teams, top-4 protected to conference champions
-- 2025: 12 teams, no top-4 protection for conference champions
-- 2026: 16 or 24 teams
This stale mate will allow the 12-team format room to breathe, which is a good thing after a largely successful 2025-26 tournament.
This year's event saw top-seeded Indiana capture the school's first national championship, while Miami went on a Cinderella run with upsets of Texas A&M, Ohio State and Ole Miss to get to the title game. Viewers rewarded the format with the most-watched college football game since Ohio State's win over Oregon in the first CFP title game in January 2015.
The 12-team format hit the sweet spot of expanding access to worthy teams, keeping the entire country involved in the season until the end, while also not diluting the value of the regular season -- see Notre Dame, whose 10-game win streak to end the season was not enough to overcome its 0-2 start.