While the upcoming 2026 College Football Playoffs will stick with the current 12-team format, there’s still a widespread push from many directions to expand things to 16 or 24 teams in the future. Back in January, ESPN’s Heather Dinich reported that there’s “more momentum than ever” to get to a 16-team field. Perhaps that number even jumps to a 24-team field as discussions continue on.
The 24-team field is something that Tennessee Vice Chancellor and Director of Athletics Danny White is eyeing. He explained his belief in this concept during Tennessee’s Big Orange Caravan event on Wednesday in Nashville.
“I’d like to see it go to 24 (teams),” White said, via Newschannel 5’s Steve Layman on X. “I think you look at the percentage of the field in football – it’s significantly less than every other sport that we have. The expanded playoff, I’ve always been an advocate for it, since way before I even came to Tennessee. I thought it would be better for the regular season. There were a lot of naysayers that said it would decimate the regular season. And what happened? We had higher ratings in the regular season than we’ve ever had before, particularly in the back third of the regular season when more teams are in the hunt. Which is healthy, and I think we see that in all of our other sports. But, a bigger percentage of SEC teams, a bigger percentage of FBS teams in general, should qualify for the postseason if we’re going to crown our national champion that way. And, we clearly are.”
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Conversations about postseason expansion haven’t been limited to just the gridiron. White’s comments come just two days after ESPN’s Pete Thamel reported that the NCAA college basketball tournament, on both the men’s and women’s side of things, is finalizing its expansion process to move from 68 teams to 76 teams.
In some ways, especially considering 10-seed Miami’s run to the College Football Playoff title game, expansion feels inevitable. It’s something that has been discussed for several years now, and it only continues to gain steam from talking heads in the media and fans with each passing year. There are gates to still pass through, though.
While making her comments on expansion momentum back in January, Dinich also noted that SEC commissioner Greg Sankey and Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti play a massive role in things. She went as far as saying that “those two men have the bulk of control over the future format.”
The College Football Playoffs originally began as a four-team tournament back in 2014, which was the format that lasted until it expanded to the 12-team format in 2024. Tennessee has made the College Football Playoffs one time in program history, which came in that inaugural expanded season back in 2024. The Volunteers were the 9-seed in the bracket and lost to 8-seed Ohio State, the eventual national champions, in the opening round from Columbus, OH.
The College Football Playoffs will remain at a 12-team field for this upcoming 2026 football season, as no expansion deal was reached before the necessary deadline. But there will always be conversation around immediate expansion, which could come as soon as the 2027 season. We’ll just have to wait and see how things unfold.
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