A loss in October can end your season. That urgency is what made it great.
In the ongoing negotiation between tradition and commerce, college football finds itself at a crossroads that basketball does not share. The College Football Playoff's expansion to 24 teams — a doubling of its field in under five years — threatens the very quality that made the sport singular: the crushing, irreversible weight of a single autumn loss. Where basketball's tournament thrives on chaos and Cinderella, football's playoff rewards only the powerful, and a bloated field does not create drama so much as dilute it. The fans who built this sport's cathedral of Saturday urgency are watching its walls come down, one revenue decision at a time.
- The CFP's leap from 12 to 24 teams is not a modest adjustment — it is a 100% expansion that doubles the field and fundamentally rewrites what a regular season loss means.
- College football's greatest tension — that a single October defeat can end everything — is being quietly dismantled, replaced by a postseason large enough to absorb mediocrity.
- Unlike March Madness, where upsets are structurally possible and chaos is the product, football's talent gaps are too vast: recent playoff entrants like James Madison and Tulane were not competitive, and the next wave will be less so.
- The pace of expansion — from 4 to 12 to 24 teams in just a few years — signals not deliberation but urgency driven by television contracts, not love of the game.
- The voices of devoted fans, those who understood what made college football irreplaceable in American sports culture, have been systematically ignored in favor of a revenue logic that treats the sport as a content delivery mechanism.
College football and college basketball are both expanding their postseason fields, and fans have reacted with near-universal alarm. But these are not the same problem, and treating them as equivalent obscures what makes one genuinely catastrophic.
The math tells part of the story. The NCAA Tournament's move from 68 to 76 teams is a 12 percent increase — notable, but not structural. The College Football Playoff's jump from 12 to 24 is a 100 percent increase. You are doubling the field in a sport with only 12 regular season games, where every Saturday already carries existential weight.
That weight is college football's defining asset. A loss in October can end a season. A single afternoon can redirect a program's entire year. That consequence is what made the regular season worth watching in a way few sports can match. A 24-team playoff dissolves that urgency. When three losses still leave a path to the championship, the regular season stops being the main event and becomes a long prologue.
Basketball expands more gracefully because its tournament format generates drama organically — hot shooting nights, momentum swings, genuine Cinderella runs. Football does not work that way. The talent gap between elite programs and mid-tier schools is too wide. Recent playoff entrants from outside the top tier were not competitive. Expanding the field further will not produce upsets; it will produce mismatches.
What compounds the concern is the speed. The playoff was four teams not long ago, then twelve, now heading to twenty-four — all within a few years. The NCAA Tournament added teams slowly, with at least the appearance of deliberation. The CFP expansion feels like it was engineered in a room where revenue was the only language spoken.
The fans who love this sport most — not casual viewers, but those who understood what made college football singular — have been sidelined in these decisions. Expansion is coming regardless. The money is too compelling, the logic too simple. But something irreplaceable is being traded away, and the people making the trade do not seem to know what it is.
College football and college basketball are both expanding their postseason tournaments, and the reaction from fans has been swift and nearly universal: this is a mistake. The NCAA Tournament is growing to 76 teams. The College Football Playoff is heading toward 24. Both decisions feel like naked money grabs, the kind of thing that makes you wonder if anyone in power actually watches the sport anymore. But they are not the same problem, and pretending they are misses what makes one genuinely catastrophic.
Start with the math. The NCAA Tournament's jump from 68 to 76 teams is a 12 percent increase—meaningful, sure, but not seismic. The College Football Playoff's expansion from 12 to 24 teams is a 100 percent increase. You are doubling the field. In a sport with a 12-game regular season, that matters in ways it simply does not for basketball, which plays 30 games before the postseason even begins.
The real damage is what happens to the regular season itself. College football's greatest asset has always been the weight of every single game. A loss in October can end your season. A team's entire trajectory turns on a single Saturday afternoon. That urgency, that consequence, is what made the regular season worth watching—worth caring about—in a way that few other sports can claim. A 24-team playoff guts that. If you know that 24 teams are making it, if you know that a team can lose three games and still have a path to the championship, the regular season becomes something else entirely. It becomes a preliminary round. The stakes flatten.
Basketball is different. March Madness thrives on expansion because the tournament format itself creates drama that a regular season cannot. A hot shooting night can topple a superior team. Cinderella runs happen. The single-elimination format rewards momentum and luck in ways that college football's playoff structure does not. In football, the talent gap between the elite programs and the mid-tier schools is simply too wide. James Madison and Tulane got demolished in recent playoff games. Now imagine Virginia, Georgia Tech, and Navy in the postseason as well. They will not win. They will not even come close. They will just be there, padding the bracket, diluting the field.
What makes this worse is the speed. Four years ago, the playoff was 12 teams. Before that, it was four. The expansion has been aggressive, almost reckless—a doubling in less than five years. The NCAA Tournament took a decade and a half to add four teams at a time. There was at least a pretense of deliberation. The CFP expansion feels like it was decided in a room where no one actually cares about the sport, only the revenue it generates.
The people running these decisions have stopped listening to the fans who actually love the game. Not the casual viewers, not the people who tune in for the big matchups. The real fans—the ones who understand what made college football singular in American sports. Those voices have been ignored for years now. Expansion is coming regardless. The money is too good, the logic too simple: more teams means more games means more television contracts means more money. Run from it. Dread it. It comes for everyone the same.
Citações Notáveis
A 24-team College Football Playoff would be catastrophic to the sport of college football— Opinion writer
The powers that be haven't taken the fans into account when making big decisions in quite some time— Opinion writer
A Conversa do Hearth Outra perspectiva sobre a história
Why does the CFP expansion feel worse to you than what's happening in basketball?
Because college football's entire identity is built on the regular season mattering. Every game is a referendum. You lose three times, your season is over. That's what made it special. A 24-team playoff destroys that.
But doesn't the NCAA Tournament also matter? March Madness is huge.
It does, but basketball can absorb expansion because the format itself creates drama. A hot team can beat anyone in a single-elimination game. Football doesn't work that way. Talent gaps are too wide. You'll just have blowouts.
So you're saying the problem isn't expansion itself—it's what expansion does to the regular season?
Exactly. The NCAA Tournament going to 76 teams is bad, sure. But it doesn't fundamentally change what college basketball is. A 24-team CFP changes everything about what college football was.
How fast did this happen?
Four years ago it was 12 teams. Before that, four. We've doubled the field in less than five years. The NCAA took fifteen years to add four teams at a time. This feels reckless.
Do you think the people making these decisions understand what they're destroying?
I don't think they care. It's about revenue. More teams, more games, more television money. The fans who actually love the sport—the ones who understand what made it great—they stopped mattering a long time ago.
Is there any way a 24-team playoff works?
Not really. Not in football. The format doesn't allow for it. You need the regular season to matter. Once you don't, you've lost the thing that made college football worth watching.