UCLA, USC pleased as College Football Playoff expands to 24 teams beginning next season
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- The College Football Playoff will expand from 12 to 24 teams next season, a sweeping change to the college football format.
- Five teams will qualify automatically, while a selection committee chooses the other 19; the top eight seeds get byes, and early-round games will be played on campus.
- The change helps UCLA and USC, which have traditionally had to fight for higher spots in the playoff rankings.
GRAPEVINE, Texas — UCLA and USC scored a win on Monday in their constant fight for respect in the college football rankings that dictate a path to a national championship.
The Bruins and Trojans rarely are ranked as high as other programs with comparable records, especially those from the Southeastern Conference, in the early College Football Playoff national rankings. Short of going undefeated, USC and UCLA faced limited opportunities to get into what was once a four-team playoff and later expanded to 12 teams. Neither the Trojans nor Bruins have ever made the cut.
Starting next season, the College Football Playoff will expand to 24 teams, a field so deep that this year’s Bruins and Trojans would be assured spots in the lucrative postseason tournament.
The Big Ten, the conference the Bruins and Trojans joined in 2024 for more revenue and championship opportunities, lobbied for this sweeping change.
USC coach Lincoln Riley was among its biggest advocates. The change seems to favor coaches like Riley, who face pressure to clinch one of 12 playoff bids. The fallout over failing to earn a spot in a 24-team field, however, could be equally challenging.
“When you get a room of 50 coaches or whatever we have in this conference together, it’s hard to get everybody to be unanimous on something,” Riley said earlier this season. “This is something where our room has been unanimous.”
UCLA coach Bob Chesney, who previously worked at lower division schools that played postseason tournaments with fields of at least 24 teams, also endorsed the changes.
“I do think the conversation of ‘it’s lazy and that people will be able to relax a little bit’ and that ‘coaches just want to do this to save their jobs,’ I don’t see that being the case at all,” he said. “I see this as something that gives other people an opportunity. Four wasn’t enough. Twelve probably not enough. And the chance of being in that tournament is what I’ve [worked for] my whole life, realistically.
“So to me, to have a quality team go play in some random bowl game as opposed to have a chance, I’d rather them have a chance. I think that’s good for the game. Time will tell.”
College leaders announced the new format Monday, after ESPN agreed to rework its contract to add the required 11 new playoff games. Terms were not announced, though ESPN said it was a deal for five years and an additional $1.7 billion, on top of the network’s $7.8-billion contract that runs through the 2031 season.
UCLA is 9-0 after an impressive win over the Minnesota, and the Bruins deserve to be the No. 1 team in the College Football Playoff rankings.
The expansion of the playoff field also means an end to the conference championship games for the so-called Power Four leagues: the Atlantic Coast, Big Ten, Big 12 and Southeastern conferences. The revenue generated from the new games presumably will make up for the millions the canceled conference title games were worth, and ESPN is getting back $140 million annually because of the canceled games, the network reported.
The Power Four leagues will get four automatic bids for their champions. The Group of Six — composed of the American Athletic, Mid-American, Mountain West, Pac-12 and Sun Belt conferences and Conference USA — will get one automatic bid that will go to the group’s highest-ranked league champion.
The other 19 teams will be chosen by a selection panel. As an independent in football, Notre Dame does not receive an automatic bid, the way it does this year if it’s ranked in the top 12 for the 12-team postseason.
The agreement guarantees two off weeks during a regular season that will begin the week before Labor Day.
The playoff will begin in December and 16 games will be played on college campuses. The top eight seeds will receive first-round byes. The traditional Army-Navy game will be played on the first weekend in December, which used to be reserved for conference title games, to avoid conflicting with the playoff.
In spite of it their up-and-down season, the Trojans are still alive in their pursuit of a College Football Playoff bid.
The changes do not alter the postseason role of the Rose Bowl, which retains its rotation as either a quarterfinal or semifinal playoff host.
“What college football fans are going to see is they’re going to see more football that matters in December,” Rose Bowl chief executive Jens Weiden said. “There are currently many bowls in December that come and go, but with this change, December will be filled with CFP games that matter and lead to the championship game.”
The new format was widely criticized online by fans, who lamented the potential reduced importance of regular-season games and loss or further diminishing of popular bowl games outside of the playoff structure.
The Holiday Bowl in San Diego, which once featured strong teams from the Pac-12 and Big Ten, faces a questionable future, while bowls in San Francisco and Los Angeles already have folded.
College Football Playoff executive director Rich Clark acknowledged criticism during a media teleconference Monday, noting that organizers expected teams to fight for top playoff seeding during the regular season and still produce intriguing games.
“We’re aware of the fan sentiment and that many fans aren’t in favor of expansion,” Clark said. “... Ultimately we just need to make a spectacular playoff. I mean, the CFP has a responsibility to our fans; they’re the lifeblood of college football. We owe it to them to make this great.”
UCLA delivered a statement win at Minnesota on Saturday, but the team has to overcome history to move up in the College Football Playoff rankings.
The playoff is requiring Power Four teams, including UCLA and USC, to play 10 games that feature either conference opponents or opponents from other Power Four conferences or Notre Dame. Group of Six teams, which would include programs such as San Diego State, must play at least 10 games that feature conference matchups; teams from Power Four or other Group of Six conferences; or Notre Dame or other independent programs.
Both the Southeastern and Big Ten conferences, whose approval was needed to adopt this change, are banking that many of the additional spots will go to their members so some of the second-tier teams have new motivation to keep spending big in an era of name, image and license deals and $50-million football rosters.
The playoff expansion is the latest seismic change for a sport that for decades built its distinct character and generated controversy by leaning on media and coaching polls to hand out national titles.
The new system won’t be a completely clean break. Critics see a risk in giving more power to a selection committee that hasn’t really mastered the four- or 12-team brackets. The exclusion of Florida State in 2023 and Notre Dame last season stand out as the best examples — and the first rankings released this season, with undefeated UCLA slotted at No. 8, left people scratching their heads again.
Skeptics also view the expanded playoff as another watering-down of what’s largely seen as one of the most important regular seasons in sports, replacing potential matchups between, say, Alabama and Georgia in an SEC title game with a playoff game between a No. 13 seed and a No. 20 seed that would pit, say, Kentucky and South Carolina.
Swanson: Lincoln Riley answers his critics with USC statement win, but he must keep delivering
USC’s stunning win over No. 2 Ohio State shows that Lincoln Riley is capable of beating highly ranked teams and guiding the Trojans to the playoffs.
But, as Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti argued from the beginning, a postseason that gives bubble teams hope and keeps others vying for home-field advantage or byes will bring more eyes — not fewer — to the end of a regular season that sometimes boils down to only three or four traditional rivalry games with meaning. (One of those traditional games, Ohio State-Michigan, is shaping up to have zero influence on this year’s playoff.)
More at-large berths also help the conferences cash in on the decision to expand their league schedules (the SEC didn’t really want to) and demand more nonleague games be played among Power Four teams — all in an effort to beef up strength-of-schedule ratings that will carry weight with a selection committee.
Limón Romero and Farmer are Times staff writers and Dullinger is a Times correspondent. Pells writes for the Associated Press.
