ESPN's Pete Thamel reported today on social media that the Big Ten is advancing an idea to expand the College Football Playoff to 24 or 28 teams.
At Big Ten Media Days commissioner Tony Petitti advocated for a more "NFL-style" playoff, using conference standings and play-in games to keep more teams alive later in the season, pointing to the pro league's "Wild Card Week."
He said in Las Vegas, "There seems to be some feeling in college football that somehow if you're 8-4 you're not a really good football team. These conferences have gotten so much bigger and deeper. That's a pretty good winning percentage last time I checked. Can an 8-4 team win a playoff game? I don't know why people have made up their minds that they know the answer to that before a game is even played."
No, absolutely NO!
— Inside the Pylon (@ITPCFB) August 16, 2025
What is this, Big 10?
Garbage idea, throw it in the trash 🗑 https://t.co/CijA9QCQin
Along the way Petitti's pitched another format for 16 teams, one that tries to rig the system with four automatic bids for the Big Ten and SEC.
The problem with all these models is that college football is a unique sport, and part of its great appeal is that is has had the most meaningful regular season in sports. The chase for a national championship starts in Week One with marquee games that the whole country looks forward to, like Texas at Ohio State, Notre Dame at Miami and LSU at Clemson.
Those are college football's play-in games. The tension is real and the stakes are high. There's emotion, color, history and tradition. Regional pride is at stake. The games have real juice.
A watered-down, super-duper made-for-television playoff format would ruin all that. Big stories, big moments and big plays, Saturdays in the fall are what college football has always been about. Don't destroy all that for a cash grab. Keep the main thing the main thing.
Other sports have chased parity to the point that they've homogenized and cheapened their product, where December is spent calculating tiebreakers for teams barely above .500. In reality no more than eight teams have the talent, depth and balance to win the national championship, and playoff expansion just makes the product as flat and stale as cold french fries.
If the decision-makers want to heighten fan interest and keep the sport vibrant, they'll preserve what makes the game great: every Saturday in the fall, not a trumped-up, fabricated playoff chase.
If they insist on expanding the playoff, the one saving grace would be more playoff games in campus settings. Those are the games with real energy.