Positives, negatives from 24-team College Football Playoff announcement

Positive: The need for conferences is essentially eliminated

Two of the major points of the new deal are how Power Four teams and Notre Dame will have to construct their schedules moving forward and the elimination of the conference championship games.

The new schedule requirements for P4 teams state that they must play at least 10 games against other P4 opponents, whether it's conference or non-conference games. Group of Six teams, who are still unfairly fighting for essentially one spot in the dance, must play 10 games against any FBS team to qualify.

While the idea is to try to create more high-profile regular-season games — think Texas-Ohio State from the last two seasons — it may end up doing the opposite, with low-end P4 teams like Rutgers and Kansas being flooded with game offers instead to fulfill the requirement. But it does force teams to actually try on the schedules and not fill it with buy games like Indiana has been doing lately.

The non-conference games may disappear soon, though, with the elimination of conference championship games, as there will be more multi-team ties and wacky tiebreakers to adhere to in the coming years. This could ultimately just end the conference splits in football and just have two pools of teams, like there basically already is.

Negative: Group of Six teams may never get a real chance again

With the new scheduling rules for P4 teams, G6 teams will never get a fair shake under this new format. P4 teams now only have two openings for non-P4 games, and do you think they will bring in top G6 teams like Boise State and James Madison to potentially get upset?

P4 and G6 teams will cannibalize each other in the regular season; the P4 games will be seen as having more value, and the G6 team that gets the privilege of being ranked as low as possible by the committee will be allowed to the dance, if the debut 2026 CFP rankings are anything to go off of. That scenario is what fans didn't want to see.

Sure, there are 19 wild-card selections in the bracket, but fans would be lucky to see two, at best, included under these rules. G6 teams would have to hold out hope for a future expansion to the popular kids table at lunch or seek out their own playoff.

Positive: We could see a true Cinderella run in the CFP

If the two previous editions of the 12-team CFP is anything to go by, there will be upsets in the bracket and this larger field could open the door for a major run by a low-ranked team.

In 2024, the top-four seeds all lost, and the national championship saw No. 8 Ohio State beat No. 7 Notre Dame. Last season did see No. 1 Indiana run the table, but they beat No. 10 Miami to do so, and the other three top seeds all lost.

While it's difficult to call the sixth-best SEC team or fifth-best Big Ten school a Cinderella, it's very likely to see a team like that get hot at the right time and make a run with a teen number or a number starting with a two next to its name.

Momentum is key in college football, and there's already precedent that it can happen.

Negative: We'll likely have to kiss those fun bowl games goodbye

One positive from the 12-team CFP was the emergence of some fun bowl games that really leaned into their branding and made fans care and pay attention. Such games included the Pop-Tarts Bowl with edible mascots and a giant toaster and the Duke's Mayo Bowl where the winning coach gets a mayonnaise bath. It's a fun caper to the season for the teams that fail to make the playoff, but these games may go by the wayside. 

These top bowl games that usually hosted P4 teams that just missed out on the CFP will now see those teams qualify, leaving them with a couple of options. The bowl games can either restructure the qualifying teams and become a de facto G6 showcase, or they can vanish, but the sponsorship moves to these first- and second-round CFP games. 

Regardless, bowl games won't be the same moving forward in 2027, and it's potentially another casualty that goes by the wayside thanks to the expanded playoff field.