College football is on the verge of a massive change once again. The powers at be are once again thinking about expanding the College Football Playoff, and this time they want to expand to 24 teams.
A lot of media, coaches and athletic administrators are in favor of this change while fans are largely against it. As of now there hasn't been a final decision made, but everyone knows that expansion will likely come no matter how against it fans are.
Former SEC head coach Bret Bielema, who is now the head coach at Illinois, is one of the biggest supporters of expansion. In fact, he is so in love with the idea that he thinks the playoff should skip past 24 teams and do a 32-team playoff instead.
NEW: Illinois' Bret Bielema tells @PeteNakos the more teams in the College Football Playoff the better🏆
— On3 (@On3) May 20, 2026
"Personally, I would love to see as many teams included as humanly possible. It can’t go to 64 — I’m not talking about that. I think somebody floated 32 last year or… pic.twitter.com/diRUyumCuL
Bret Bielema proposes new CFP format that would ruin college football
What is it with the Big Ten wanting to ruin college football. The SEC was originally in favor of a smaller expansion to 16 teams, but the Big Ten wanted to make the immediate jump to 24 teams. They finally convinced the SEC to agree with them, but Bielema isn't satisfied.
Now he wants teams that aren't even in the top 25 to make it into the playoff.
But don't worry, he thinks 64 teams would be too many.
College Football Playoff expansion is the one thing every fan is against
As mentioned, it is college football fans that are against expansion. Unfortunately for them their opinion really doesn't matter, but they have a lot of good reasons for why expansion would be bad for the sport.
The first reason is that the regular season would be far less meaningful. Expanding the playoff field to 24 teams would mean that schools in the SEC or Big Ten could still get in the playoff with an 8-4 record. Since when does a team with that record deserve a shot to play for a national title?
The best thing about college football has always been how much the regular season mattered. Teams could lose just one game and their hopes of winning a championship would be gone. No other sport in the world had a regular season this important, but for some reason decision makers want college football to be like every other sport.
Imagine for a second how much rivalry games will suffer with this change. Take Georgia for example and their heated matchups with Florida, Auburn and Georgia Tech. Losing any one of those games used to end Georgia's hopes of making a run at a National Championship, but now Georgia could lose all three and still find themselves in the playoff.
Where's the fun in that?
Another reason why expansion is bad is because it likely will result in the end of conference championship games. Kirby Smart has discussed how bad this would be for the sport, but replacing historic games like conference championships for blowout playoff games doesn't feel right.
Even if there are a lot of reasons why expansion is bad, the decision makers see how much more money they will make from it. Unfortunately for the fans that is the only thing that seems to matter anymore.
Add us as a preferred source on Google