Should the College Football Playoff expand to 24 teams, 16 teams, or just stay where it is at 12 teams? That's the question on everyone's mind who follows the sport, and it's come down to the SEC being the lone holdout from supporting expansion right now.
As the senior member of the current SEC coaching fraternity, Kirby Smart needs to be the one to guide this discussion and (hopefully) keep the College Football Playoff from becoming watered down and to keep the greatest regular season in all of sports from becoming essentially meaningless.
Because if the playoff expands to 24 teams, that's exactly what will happen. Rivalry week and those late season inter-conference battles will just become more of the "who's opting out" and "which coaches are resting the starters" watch just like Bowl Season has become.
The two deciding votes in this matter -- the Big Ten and the SEC -- are currently on opposite sides of the aisle. The Big Ten has already formally declared its support for expansion, and the SEC is still holding out despite other conferences reportedly being on the side of enlarging the playoff field.
If ever there were a time for Kirby Smart to use his powers of persuaion, it's now, or college football as we know it will be irreversably damaged. Will the sport go on? Certainly, there's too much money at stake for it not to continue, but the things that made the sport as great as it is will become glass case relics, and no fan wants to see that.
But currently, Smart is breaking ranks, and for those opposed to expansion that's not a good thing.
"I'm not pro 16 or 24, I'm pro more than 12. But what is your stance against the 24? Water it down? Regular season? ... I agree with all those. I just don't know where that line of demarcation is." the Georgia head coach said in a recent interview with Josh Pate.
"I think in our model, our program ... we've had a model of consistency. We lose games, but we haven't lost a lot of games we're not supposed to. And so, if you're that kind of program, you want that thing nice and tight. You don't want these outsiders getting in that could get hot. I always told people, some of these teams, they can play with anybody on any given Saturday, but they might not get up for every Saturday."
So are you in or out, coach?
I simply refuse to lose Kirby to the CFP Expansion Cult. ROBUST CONVERSATION today... pic.twitter.com/5UBWbNFanR
— Josh Pate (@JoshPateCFB) May 4, 2026
FBS football is built differently, and only the fans and the most of the SEC seem to see that
The biggest argument you hear (that doesn't somehow point to following the money) is "look at FCS football and college basketball, they've been running huge tournaments for years and it hasn't hurt them."
While on the surface that may be true, the fact is, it's as apples-to-oranges a comparison as you will ever find.
College basketball teams can play up to 40 or more games a season before the tournaments, and may play their biggest rivals two or even three times. Even if the NCAA basketball tournament expands and the regular season shrinks, the only thing being lost are some out-of-conference games that -- for the most part -- didn't matter in the grand scheme of things.
In basketball, nearly everyone participates in a postseason conference tournament. In college football, only the elite teams have to play that extra game, and that, too, could be affected by expanding the playoff.
The FCS is different in that it has 123 teams in 13 conferences, and two independent schools, that are eligible for postseason play, but those conferences are -- for the most part -- very regionalized so rivalry games are not lost and actually play into how the postseason unfolds.
The FBS has already had its regionalization destroyed by conference realignment (driven by money), and some of the greatest rivalries in the sport have been tabled because these massive superconferences need more games between teams within.
An expanded playoff would take what started as the four elite teams, and tear it down to 24 possibly pretty good teams. The run of CFP first-round blowouts we've seen in recent years would likely see a massive increase and the drama of November in the regular season would become a thing of the past.
The problem isn't with the number of teams in the CFP, it's with the committee
Kirby Smart can probably understand better than anyone how simply expanding to more teams in the playoff won't solve the fundamental problem -- the committee.
Every year, fans and the media (and even some coaches) press the CFP committee on some hard criteria for getting into the playoff, and every year it seems that criteria changes and the committee doesn't adhere to what they have laid out.
The idea that a group of 12 people could honestly and objectively rank college football teams and select who they view as the most worthy for the playoff was doomed from the start, whether it's four teams, 12 teams or even (heaven help us) 24 teams.
Before we even think about expanding the playoff field again, there needs to be a serious discussion about how the playoff teams are chosen and how to keep the criteria consistent for everyone. Find a model that fairly, accurately, and -- most importantly -- consistently considers and uses all factors into ranking teams, and you''ll see some of the end-of-season whining die down.
Coaches going all in on expansion probably have self-preservation in mind rather than sport preservation.
Texas A&M head coach Mike Elko hit the nail on the head, saying, "I don't know why you ask us. It doesn't matter what we think. I don't know why we're trying to become a trophy sport. What does Mike Elko want? 40. Then I won't get fired. It's OK to make it hard to get to the playoff... None of us are answering for the good of the sport. We're answering for the good of ourselves."
In the end, it's not going to matter how many teams are included, there will always be teams on the fringe of the bottom tier who feel they were slighted, snubbed or unfairly left out. Look at the NCAA basketball tournament. 68 teams, expanding to 72 teams, and there are still arguments every year about "who got left out".
Hopefully, Kirby Smart won't continue his lean towards expansion. The College Football Playoff can still remain relatively exclusive (which it should be) while protecting the integrity of the regular season with 12 teams. We've already all but lost the Bowl Season, we can't afford to jeopardize the most magical regular season there is in sports.
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