The College Football Playoff will expand to 24 teams beginning with the 2027 season, ESPN's Heather Dinich reported Monday.
The deal was widely expected for weeks now but was not official until the CFP and ESPN agreed to terms, which they now have. ESPN will pay $1.7 billion for the rights to the tournament, which the network will largely finance through the cancellation of conference championship games. Though ESPN owns the rights to all 23 games, it's expected the network will sublicense certain games to other networks, as it currently does to TNT.
-- Though not yet official, the CFP is widely expected to begin the second weekend of December and run through its current date -- quarterfinals at bowl sites on and around New Year's Day, semifinals at bowl sites the following Thursday and Friday, and a championship game on a Monday night in deep January. The 2027 championship game is expected to remain on Jan. 24, 2028, to be played in New Orleans.
-- In an "only in college football" statement, the CFP will operate under five formats in five years:
- The original 4-team bracket in 2023
- The original 12-team bracket in 2024, with first-round byes for the top four conference champions
- A new 12-team bracket, with no byes for the four highest-ranked teams
- Largely the same in 2026, except Notre Dame is now guaranteed a bid if ranked in the committee's top 12 and an automatic bid for the highest-ranked Group of 6 team, not necessarily the highest-ranked Group of 6 champion
- A 24-team format with 23 at-large bids, and one automatic bid for the highest-ranked Group of 6 team
The CFP and ESPN have agreed on a five-year, nearly $1.7 billion deal that will expand the field to 24 teams in 2027 with ESPN as its continued broadcast partner, sources told ESPN, a seismic move that also eliminates the lucrative Power 4 conference championship games.
— Heather Dinich (@CFBHeather) November 9, 2026
-- Those rooting against 24 teams have the faintest glimmer of hope. The CFP operates as a series of TV contracts, and the expansion to 24 is an extension of the current one, not the creation of a brand new deal. That means there is no CFP format on the books beyond the 2031 season. College football leaders are aware that expanding the postseason risks a massive blow to the urgency of the regular season, and so a decline in regular-season ratings for upcoming seasons could, in theory, mean a re-examining of the format at the beginning of the upcoming decade.
Having said that, the next playoff bracket to contract, in any American sport, would be the first.
We wrote last week that the epic slate that saw multiple top-10 teams put their entire seasons on the line on a November Saturday could be the last of its kind, and that unfortunately was correct.