College football playoffs meet to raise 12-team expanded game schedule

Irving, Texas – The college football playoff management committee began work Thursday to implement a 12-team playoff early in the 2024 season, but the sense of progress and harmony has also been tempered by the accelerating schedule they hope to encounter this fall.

“There is an emphasis on the schedule,” said US Athletic Conference Commissioner Mike Aresco. “Our minds are very focused because we know we have to get it done if it’s going to happen. And I think the goal would be to get it done, but who knows.”

The 10 FBS Commissioners and Notre Dame Athletics Director Jack Swarbrick gathered in a small conference room at DFW Airport for 4½ hours, their first discussion since the 11 chiefs and advisers controlling the playoff voted unanimously last week in favor of expanding the stadium to 12 teams in 2026. Urging The CFP board strongly delegates, who have not been able to agree on the format since the original proposal was announced in June 2021, to get it done as soon as possible.

“Even I feel better coming out of the meeting than coming out, and I was confident going into the meeting,” Big Ten commissioner Kevin Warren said. “But we have a lot of experienced people and we have common goals and it was a very productive meeting. So I am very happy where we are and we have a lot of work to do, though. We have a lot to get done.”

CFP CEO Bill Hancock said that while there is no set deadline, they hope to have an answer this fall. The current contract runs until the 2025 season, and the CFP announced in mid-August that Atlanta would host the national championship game in 2025, followed by Miami in January 2026.

While CFP officials have put the brakes on such a surprise move — venues, hotels, TV contracts — there is an estimated $450 million in total revenue if commissioners manage to implement the new format for the last two seasons.

ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips said they discussed each year — 2024, 2025 and 2026 — at Thursday’s meeting, but he is “optimistic.”

“We’ve had four or five really good calls in a row,” Phillips said. “It wasn’t something where we were off track, meaning we’re all trying to figure out how to do this thing. So there’s a lot of energy in the room. There’s a lot of optimism, but it’s the details. The devil is in the details and the work that needs to be done.”

The Commissioners and Swarbrick are scheduled to meet again this month at the Big Ten offices in Rosemont, Illinois. When asked how confident he was of having 12 teams at the 2024 Stadium, Mountain West commissioner Craig Thompson said, “There are several more steps.”

“There are a lot of moving parts, a lot of pieces,” Thompson said. “…so it will not be due to lack of effort, whatever happens.”

The teams’ standings will continue to be determined by the CFP Selection Committee, which will remain largely unchanged. The four highest-ranked conference champions will be ranked from one to four, and each will receive a goodbye in the first round. Teams seeded five through 12 will play each other in the first round in either the second or third weekend of December. The quarter-finals and semi-finals will be played in alternating pot matches, and the championship match will be at a neutral location, as in the current four-team format.

On Saturday, before Georgia and Oregon begin the season in Atlanta, US Securities and Exchange Commission Commissioner Greg Sankey expressed skepticism about the debut of a 12-team playoff before the 2026 season.

Following Thursday’s meetings, he acknowledged that it was a possibility.

“There is a lot of work to be done, but the opportunity is there,” Sankey said.