Kalen DeBoer shares thoughts on how many teams should be in expanded CFP
By David Wasson
Published:
The College Football Playoff has seen two years of success with its 12-team format, but that hasn’t stopped the sport’s powers-that-be from wanting to expand to 16 or even 24 teams.
No expansion is in line for 2026, but sentiment seems to be growing straight from a 16-team format to a jumbo 24-team format that would seemingly eliminate conference championship games for the Power 4 leagues.
Southeastern Conference commissioner Greg Sankey has consistently been in favor of expanding to 16 teams, but league coaches are slowly warming up to the notion of 24-team bracket – though you can’t yet count Alabama’s Kalen DeBoer among them.
“I’d have to see exactly how 24 comes together,” DeBoer said to Bama247. “And you’re obviously messing around with conference championships. You know, you can talk me through that, I guess. But I think 16 is a good number. Twelve, with the way some of the divvying out of automatic qualifiers is happening, I think, it makes it a little bit tight.”
Alabama earned a bid in last year’s 12-team Playoff bracket as a No. 9 seed, then went on to down No. 8 seed Oklahoma in the first round. The SEC is moving to nine conference games starting in 2026, however, which could make the margin of error to make the Playoff field in its current iteration even narrower.
The Big Ten and SEC are at a stalemate in deciding the CFP’s future, as the Big Ten is reportedly pushing to move beyond a short run at 16 teams to 24 teams – a concept the SEC has been reluctant to accept.
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An APSE national award-winning writer and editor, David Wasson has almost four decades of experience in the print journalism business in Florida and Alabama. His work has also appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and several national magazines and websites. His Twitter handle: @JustDWasson.
