An 8-4 team in the College Football Playoff is actually happening. Sound the alarm

AlabamaArizonaBYUGeorgiaGeorgia TechHoustonIndianaIowaJames MadisonMiami (FL)MichiganNorth TexasNotre DameOhio StateOklahomaOle MissOregonTexas A&MTexasTexas TechTulaneUSCUtahVanderbiltVirginiaScores & ScheduleStandingsPodcastsNewsletterRecruitingOddsPicksBest Portal Classes2026 CFB PredictionsEarly Top 25Transfer QB RankingsAn 8-4 team in the College Football Playoff is actually happening. Sound the alarmTony Pettiti has convinced some in the industry to expand the Playoff to 24 teams. Marc Lebryk / Getty Images Share articleWho here saw the 2021 disaster satire “Don’t Look Up”? A comet is heading toward Earth that will surely wipe out civilization. Meryl Streep’s dim-witted president comes up with a plan to send a nuclear weapon into space to destroy it, but calls it off when a billionaire donor convinces her cabinet that they will all get rich by mining it for minerals instead. Spoiler alert: Civilization gets wiped out. This exact scenario is unfolding in college football right now. Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti (not a billionaire, but certainly a get-rich-schemer) has somehow convinced a growing number of fellow power-brokers — ACC commissioner Jim Phillips, Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark, Notre Dame athletic director Pete Bevacqua and Fox Sports CEO Eric Shanks — that a 24-team College Football Playoff is the answer to all their problems. Much like the alarmist astronomers in “Don’t Look Up” who can’t get anyone to listen to them, 90 percent of actual college football fans are pleading with these guys: Don’t do it! (That’s a real number, by the way, based on several online polls.) But to this point, no one is listening to them. I know Tony Petitti hates Twitter polls but … um, 9 percent. pic.twitter.com/jOqabJwwEU — Stewart Mandel (@slmandel) April 22, 2026 Because what would they know? They’re only the folks who buy the tickets and deliver the Nielsen ratings that fund the entire enterprise. We just went through this to some extent with the 76-team NCAA tournament nonsense, but the consequences of that one — a few more mediocre teams get in and the bracket gets clunkier — are puny compared with the transformation college football is considering. Doubling the size of the CFP would redefine the entire ethos of the sport. And not in a good way. What draws tens of millions of people to tune in on fall Saturdays is that the regular season matters. You can’t go 9-8 and play for the Super Bowl, or go .500 in your basketball conference and still reach the Final Four. No one rests their superstars for a Week 4 road game like in the NBA. But they might now. Heck, this is a sport where, as recently as 2023, you could go undefeated and not play for a national title (sorry, Florida State). Now, in what would be the grossest overcorrection in modern sports history, we could go from that to 8-4 teams in the Playoff in the span of four years. It should come as no surprise that the guy spearheading this whole thing, Petitti, honed his craft as an executive at Major League Baseball, where you can go 83-79 and contend for the World Series. It’s a classic case of self-preservation. No one is looking out for the larger enterprise, just their own job security. And the worst part is, they’re responding to crises of their creation. They made their conferences too big, so now they need more Playoff berths. They spent so many years and billable hours fighting to prevent players from making money that now even $1 billion-a-year TV contracts aren’t enough to cover the roster. So they talk themselves into half-cocked justifications like: 1. “Teams will play tougher nonconference games!” No, they’ll say nine conference games are tough enough to try to finish 9-3. 2. “So many more late-season games will be meaningful.” Sure, but they’ll be games between two fourth-place teams rather than No. 1 Alabama vs. No. 5 LSU. 3. “Coaches will be under less pressure!” Tell that to the 10 NFL coaches (out of 32) who lost their jobs last year, including one who even won a wild-card game. This is college football’s comet moment. Very happy to see @brettyormark and Jim Phillips speak out in support of the 24-team playoff. This move makes money, makes sense, and is broadly supported by the college football ecosystem. Let’s get it done! https://t.co/AjpznqeYNu — Cody Campbell (@CodyC64) May 13, 2026 Right now, SEC commissioner Greg Sankey appears to be the last one left pointing toward the sky. He, too, wants expansion — but so far, he’s not ready to go beyond 16. His and Petitti’s conferences gained sole decision-making power over future postseason formats in the new CFP contract that begins this year. And they’ve been locked in a standstill for more than two years. You may recall that Petitti’s original grand plan was a 16-team CFP, with the Big Ten and SEC each receiving four automatic qualifier berths and the ACC and Big 12 two. Truly no one wanted that, and Sankey delivered the death knell at his league’s annual spring meetings in Destin, Fla., last year, when he revealed his coaches opposed it. There were not enough at-large berths for their mighty teams. The 24-team version would grant just one AQ to the highest Group of 6 team. The entire Big Ten or SEC could theoretically qualify. The SEC folks return to Destin in a couple of weeks, this time without such unanimity. Several of Sankey’s own constituents — Georgia coach Kirby Smart, Tennessee coach Josh Heupel and AD Danny White — have come out in favor of 24. (Conversely, Texas’s Steve Sarkisian told USA Today on Tuesday it’s a “knee-jerk reaction” and that “We don’t think about the unintended consequences of decisions we make.”) If Sankey leaves meetings with the impression that the majority of his ADs and coaches support 24, he’ll likely face increasing pressure to stand down. But attendees will also hear from other folks with a vested interest: ESPN execs. They make the rounds at all the spring meetings, including the ACC’s earlier this week, where Phillips relayed exactly how the network feels about a giant bracket. “ESPN’s made it clear, they want it to stay at 12 or 14, but no more than 16,” the commissioner told reporters. Of course, that’s the case. ESPN has been the exclusive CFP rightsholder since the CFP’s 2014 inception and just signed an extension through 2031-32. But that deal only covers a field up to 14 teams. Any games above that — in this case, 10 of them — can go to the open market. Hence why Fox’s Shanks is such a big fan of 24. Industry folks believe Sankey’s stance goes hand in hand with that of his league’s most important partner. Imagine telling ESPN you want to renegotiate your TV contract (which runs through 2034) to take less money because you’ve decided to cancel your most-watched game of the year (the SEC championship). Oh, and all those games you show in September and October will have considerably lower stakes. How would Mario Cristobal change the college football postseason? -Finish the season earlier. One bye week then start games. -Do NOT expand to 24 teams. "I'm not for the 24 team thing, that's a lot. Why play a regular season then? And I'm certianly not for automatic bids." https://t.co/ChmBdEMsFt pic.twitter.com/rpxxO0tafg — Kevin Clark (@bykevinclark) May 13, 2026 All told, the four conferences would collectively lose an estimated $250 million a year if they ended their championship games. Surely they must have hard and fast data showing that those 10 CFP games would be insanely valuable to make that trade. Industry sources say the CFP’s media consultants are only now beginning that process. Any wildly optimistic projections floating around the Amelia Island Ritz-Carlton this week were as sound as that Utah professor who told the former Pac-12 they should ask for $50 million per team. Note that ESPN currently sublicenses half its first-round games to TNT. The new ones would feature lower-ranked teams. Ultimately, it’s not the coaches, the ADs, or even the commissioners who get the final word on this thing. Every school president has to sign off on it. The size of a football playoff is not exactly the top priority on most of their agendas these days, and they might not even be paying much attention to the topic. So if you’re one of the 90 percent who think this is madness, who is as concerned as I am about a bunch of short-sighted administrators robbing college football of its soul, email your favorite school’s president or chancellor. Voice your concerns. Let them know how much this matters to you. Because right now the comet is hurtling on a direct path to destroy the greatest regular season in sports, and no one is listening. I love college football. I’m good with 12 team playoff. I think that’s a really good number. Having a 24 team playoff is gross. — Daniel Jeremiah (@MoveTheSticks) May 13, 2026 Spot the pattern. Connect the terms Find the hidden link between sports terms