Support growing for 16-team College Football Playoff, per report

According to a college football insider, signs are pointing toward a 16-team College Football Playoff format for 2026 and beyond.

Ross Dellenger shared the latest following an in-person meeting of the 4 Power conference commissioners in New York City on Thursday.

There is growing B1G-SEC support for a 16-team bracket, most notably a…
4 (SEC)
4 (B1G)
2 (ACC)
2 (B12)
1 (G6)
3 (at large)
…with season-ending inner-league play-in games (3rd place v 6th; 4th vs 5th), as @YahooSports reported in February.https://t.co/Rcl99Wndj9

— Ross Dellenger (@RossDellenger) May 8, 2025

As Dellenger notes, the push for an expanded Playoff with multiple automatic qualifiers for conferences has been talked about for more than a year, with renewed momentum in recent months. Discussions have focused on expanding to 14 or 16, with the SEC and Big Ten leaders pushing for 4 automatic bids. Conference bids are the same for 14- and 16-team proposed CFP formats with the only difference being 1 (14-team) or 3 (16-team) at-large bids.

Tied to potential Playoff expansion is the SEC adding a 9th conference game to its schedule. On Thursday, it was reported that ESPN is ready to pay the SEC $50-80 million more annually for teams to add a 9th conference game to the football schedule. If the SEC secures a 4th auto bid, conference teams will be less concerned with beating up on each other during the regular season.

Andrew Olson

Andrew writes about sports to fund his love of live music and collection of concert posters. He strongly endorses the Hall of Fame campaigns of Fred Taylor and Andruw Jones.