No decision on CFP expansion expected as deadline looms, leaders remain deadlocked on formatting
College Football Playoff leaders met Sunday in South Beach with expansion on the table and no resolution in sight. With the Big Ten and SEC still split on 16 vs. 24 teams, the postseason remains stuck at 12 with a deadline looming Friday.
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MIAMI BEACH, Fla. -- Executives with the College Football Playoff are not expected to make a decision Sunday on whether to expand the format after a lengthy, in-person meeting on the eve of the national championship game, sources told CBS Sports.
The four power conference commissioners met this morning but made no headway in negotiations on whether to expand the 12-team playoff to 16 or 24 teams. The Big Ten and SEC, which control voting power, continue to disagree on the expansion format. The Big Ten prefers 24 teams, while the SEC continues to stick with a 16-team format.
The CFP's management committee is meeting Sunday afternoon in South Beach for their annual meeting to review the most recent playoff.
CFP leaders have been at an impasse for most of the last calendar year, though every power conference wants to expand the field from 12 teams starting with the 2026 season. ESPN, the CFP's broadcast partner through 2032, granted playoff executives an extended deadline from Dec. 1 to Jan. 23. It's possible -- but unlikely -- that executives agree on an expanded format before Friday, resulting in the postseason tournament remaining at 12 teams.
CBS Sports reported last week that the Big Ten has floated a compromise to the power conferences that would allow a transition period from a 16-team format to a 24-team format. The 16-team field would be temporary, possibly lasting up to three years. The stopgap would buy conferences time to unwind one of the sport's most complicated obstacles: conference championship games, which are tied up in lucrative and overlapping media rights agreements through at least the end of the decade. The belief is that power conferences would eliminate their conference championship games in the new model.
As CFP expansion decision looms, Big Ten floats temporary 16-team field as stopgap amid stalemate with SEC
Brandon Marcello
The power conferences, however, are not yet biting on the Big Ten's proposal.
The ACC, Big 12 and SEC continue to back a 16-team "5+11" format that guarantees automatic bids to the five highest-ranked conference champions. The roadblock remains the Big Ten and SEC's controlling interest in CFP decision-making. If the two largest conferences don't align, the playoff stays at 12 teams.
The Big Ten has strongly favored a 24-team field since August.
The Big Ten has also explored a different version of a 24-team playoff -- one with just one automatic qualifier reserved for the highest-ranked Group of Six champion with the remaining 23 teams seeded strictly by CFP Rankings. The thinking is that a largely open field could entice the SEC, sources familiar with the Big Ten's thinking told CBS Sports.
A 24-team field with four automatic qualifiers for each of the four power conferences was also discussed within the Big Ten, which was socialized with the FBS members. The ACC and Big 12 have long requested equal access, including qualifiers, for every power conference. A 16-team format with unequal AQs -- four for the Big Ten and SEC, and two for the ACC and Big 12 -- did not gain traction last spring and summer.
One Big Ten concept would include 16 on-campus games across the first two rounds, with eight byes awarded to the highest-ranked teams.
Quarterfinals and semifinals would remain at marquee bowl sites -- including the Fiesta, Peach, Sugar, Orange and Cotton bowls -- while an expanded neutral-site slate could pull lower-tier bowls into the playoff ecosystem. An increase from seven to 11 neutral-site games would suddenly make the idea of a Pop-Tarts Bowl playoff game plausible.
What is losing momentum is replacing conference championship games with playoff play-ins.
One concept would require asking Army and Navy to move their annual rivalry game from the second Saturday in December to the first Saturday. The plan has been rebuffed by both academies and President Donald Trump, who on Saturday said he plans to issue an executive order barring the movement of the game's date while also providing a four-hour exclusive broadcast window for the game.
A 16-team format proposal could include two play-in games, sandwiching the Army-Navy broadcast window on CBS, which would not interfere with the four-hour broadcast window. A 24-team field would likely require Army-Navy to move its game up a week.
