A White House presidential committee is arguing to expand the College Football Playoff (CFP) to 24 teams, according to a report from Yahoo! Sports’ Ross Dellenger.
As of now, 12 teams make the postseason every year. Officials have discussed increasing the postseason field to 16. However, according to the report, the presidential commission has expressed an openness to a 24-team field primarily as a means to “generate more revenue to help financially stressed schools.”
According to Dellenger’s report, the group consists of former college football officials, coaches, media members, a Republican operative, at least one Trump campaign donor, and a New York Yankees executive.
“I think it’s accurate to say that there is a coalescing around 24,” a source who sits on both the CFP and presidential committees told Yahoo! Sports.
While the presidential committee has no hands-on, practical control, as seen in the quote above, there is overlap, as some presidential committee members also serve on the CFP committee.
The government’s influence over college sports has grown exponentially in recent years, with the Biden administration permitting transgender athletes, Trump’s efforts to overturn the Biden administration’s transgender ruling, and, recently, Trump’s executive order to bring a basic rule structure to regulate transgender and name, image, and likeness (NIL) payments.
That last part, the government’s involvement in NIL, has led to the feds weighing in on other areas.
As one CFP committee member told Dellenger, “We asked the government for help with NIL, and now they’re involved in the playoff.”
Still, the number of teams that will populate the college football postseason field ultimately rests with the powers that be. In this case, the Big 10 and the SEC conferences.
But even if the solution the presidential committee suggests – the 24-team playoff – does not become a reality. The problem it seeks to address remains a very big one: How do mid-major and small-college athletic departments survive in a world dominated by four athletic conferences?
An ever-expanding playoff field may work from the standpoint of cutting a bunch of smaller schools into the postseason payout pool. However, it has the equally detrimental effect of diluting the regular-season games and making them less compelling.
It’s unlikely that the Big Ten or SEC – both of which have lucrative multi-million-dollar broadcast deals with major sports networks – would consent to a playoff format that hurts the ratings they crave from primetime and nationally televised games.
The only thing that is for sure is that the current 12-team CFP format will remain in place for at least one more season.
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