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A 24-team playoff is a cash grab that would cheapen college football

A general view of the Rose Bowl is seen at the College Football Playoff game between the Indiana Hoosiers and Alabama Crimson Tide in Pasadena, California, on Jan. 1, 2026. Kirby Lee-Imagn Images

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A 24-team playoff is a cash grab that would cheapen college football

Posted 20 hours ago | By Thomas Neumann

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Let's call it what it is: minor league football.

The College Football Playoff is apparently poised to expand to 24 teams, ESPN reports, a shameless cash grab and giant middle finger to millions of fans across the nation. For a sport that was intractably stuck on a two-team postseason from 1998 through 2013, it has since miraculously rushed from four to 12 and now two dozen teams in recent years.

Gross.

"We are killing the best regular season in all of sport," Missouri Tigers great and ESPN analyst Chase Daniel said Thursday on social media. "It's special because every single Saturday matters. Twenty-four teams completely changes that. ... A loss doesn't carry even remotely the same consequences."

Daniel then hit the nail on the head near the end of his commentary.

"We're rewarding mediocrity. That's the biggest thing," Daniel said. "A 24-team playoff, it could create the wrong incentives for athletic directors and coaches. ... Just because you can do it doesn't mean you should."

Daniel is correct when he says a 24-team playoff will cheapen the on-field product. Three- and four-loss teams will regularly qualify for the 24-team playoff field. Roughly half the Big Ten and SEC will qualify. The CFP won't bear any semblance of exclusivity. The fans, bands, traditions and rivalries are being sold out by a handful of short-sighted college administrators and media executives.

Storied rivalry games, such as Michigan-Ohio State, will be cheapened by the advent of a 24-team College Football Playoff. Rick Osentoski-Imagn Images

The current 12-team playoff is damn near perfect. What happened to "if it ain't broke, don't fix it"?

In the Bowl Championship Series era, every Saturday of the regular season featured a slate of de facto elimination games. A single loss could end a team's championship hopes. No more. Now, you can lose four games and still reach the playoff! The CFP, and consequently the regular season, will simply no longer be special.

Traditional postseason bowl games, already diminished in the 12-team playoff era, are utterly irrelevant now. Rivalry games won't mean quite as much. Power 4 conference championship games are no more. Might as well move the kickoff time of the Rose Bowl and ruin the prettiest sunset in sports while we're at it. Oh wait ...

Perhaps not all is lost. The ink on the contract isn't dry yet. ESPN's report carefully notes the phrase "pending final approvals" in the first paragraph of its news story on the matter.

What that means is that fans still have time to voice their displeasure to Power 4 athletic departments. Threaten to withhold your annual gift to the university or give up your season tickets. Hit them in the pocketbook. Clearly, money is the only language these folks speak.

That might seem like a Hail Mary tactic, in football parlance. But "done deals" don't always come to fruition in college football.

In 2017, the Tennessee Volunteers were all set to hire Greg Schiano as head coach — until they weren't. Fierce blowback from the fan base unraveled the move and ultimately cost athletic director John Currie his job. With that Hail Mary, fans made administrators unring the bell. Their voices were heard when they spoke en masse.

It can happen again. Otherwise, get ready for a horribly cheapened regular season and a lopsided playoff slate.

Keep calling it college football if you like. After a cash grab like this, it's just minor league football.

Thomas Neumann is an editor for Yardbarker. A longtime sports journalist, he previously worked at ESPN, Sports Illustrated, USA TODAY Sports Media Group, Athlon Sports and The San Diego Union-Tribune. He is a graduate of San Diego State University.

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