The College Football Playoff is moving closer to doubling its field from 12 teams to 24, a change that would hand Iowa a long-awaited postseason berth but strip the sport's regular season of the stakes that made it special, Sporting News reported on Oct. 16.
According to Sporting News, a poll of college football fans found 80.7% oppose the 24-team model. The outlet's own analysis pulls no punches: the expansion would be, in its words, the death of the regular season.
What a 24-team field means for Iowa
For Hawkeye fans, the numbers sting. Iowa has never made the College Football Playoff since it began in 2014. Under a 24-team model, Sporting News calculated, the Hawkeyes would have qualified six times, the same as Oklahoma State.
That sounds like a win for a program that has watched the postseason from the outside for more than a decade. But the tradeoff is real. A larger field means three- and four-loss SEC and Big Ten teams would slide in comfortably, and the urgency of September and October games would drain away.
Yahoo Sports made the point with this weekend's biggest game, Ohio State at Indiana. In a 24-team field, the Buckeyes could lose that game, drop another later, and still make the playoff, in Yahoo's words, without breaking a sweat.
Why the regular season was different
College football built its following on a simple premise: every game matters. Lose once in September and a title shot could vanish. No other sport offered that kind of weekly pressure.
Sporting News pointed to Week 6 of this season as evidence of what is at risk. No. 1 Georgia beat No. 6 Alabama 20-17 at Bryant-Denny Stadium, but the game averaged 12.24 million viewers in prime time on ABC. The next day, a regular-season NFL game between San Francisco and Seattle drew 26.697 million on Fox.
The gap matters because college football's edge over the pros was never production quality. It was stakes. Sporting News counted 14 top-10 showdowns across the 2024 and 2025 seasons, and both teams made the playoff in only six of them. Double the field to 24, and that number climbs sharply. When everyone gets in, nobody has to sweat November.
Rematches and the NFL problem
Expansion also means more rematches, which college fans have never embraced. Georgia-Ole Miss and Alabama-Oklahoma were both replays of regular-season SEC games in last year's playoff, and the 2012 Alabama-LSU BCS title game rematch is still remembered as the moment the old system lost its credibility.
The Athletic, in an Oct. 16 analysis, argued the 24-team playoff will not kill college football outright, but that something will be lost forever: the high-stakes regular-season drama that survived even as conference realignment scattered traditional rivals across the country. The Athletic noted realignment already sent Iowa to Seattle and Stanford to Miami, leaving the regular season as the last untouched piece of the sport's identity.
The college football regular season, which was the best regular season in sports, is no longer that. Notice we said 'was.'
Other changes coming with a 24-team CFP
Sporting News laid out side effects beyond the regular season:
- Conference championship games would likely disappear. That raises the question of what conferences are even for, beyond revenue sharing.
- The Group of 6 gets a guaranteed spot, but a school outside the top 24 could still be left out, possibly opening the door to a separate G6 playoff.
- Bowl season would shrink or transform, with some bowls possibly moving into the regular season as neutral-site games.
- The calendar gets crowded. The playoff would start two weeks after the regular season ends, forcing 23 postseason games into late December and January while competing head-to-head with the NFL. This season's title game is scheduled for Jan. 25, 2027 at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas.
Was the 12-team model given a fair shot?
The 12-team playoff has run only a short time, and by most accounts it worked. Indiana's unbeaten season became one of the best stories in the sport, on-campus playoff games drew big crowds, and the field stayed small enough that a regular-season loss still carried a price. Notre Dame and Texas both paid for early defeats last year and earned their way back in.
Sporting News noted the earlier formats each had flaws. The BCS arrived in 1998 after three split national titles in a decade. The four-team playoff opened with a thrill in 2014 but produced a decade where seven programs, Alabama, Ohio State, Clemson, Oklahoma, Georgia and Michigan, filled 75% of the available spots.
The 12-team version struck a balance. Expansion to 24 abandons it.
Will fans adjust to a 24-team playoff?
They have adjusted before, after the BCS in 1998 and the four-team model in 2014. But Sporting News argues this change is different because the 80.7% of fans who oppose it are not resisting novelty. They are resisting the loss of what made the sport worth watching.
For Iowa fans, the question is simple. Would a sixth hypothetical playoff appearance mean as much as a first real one? The chase is the story. Hand the Hawkeyes a seat at a 24-team table, and the seat stops being worth the chase.
HoosierStateofMind, an Indiana fan site, put it bluntly in an Oct. 15 post: with a 24-team field, teams can lose a third of their games and still reach the playoffs.
FAQ
How many teams would be in the expanded College Football Playoff?
The field would grow from 12 teams to 24, doubling the current model.
Has Iowa ever made the College Football Playoff?
No. Iowa has never qualified since the playoff began in 2014, though Sporting News calculated the Hawkeyes would have made it six times under a 24-team format.
What happens to conference championship games under a 24-team CFP?
They would likely be eliminated, according to Sporting News and Yahoo Sports reporting.
When would the playoff start with 24 teams?
Two weeks after the regular season ends, squeezing 23 postseason games into a window that competes directly with the NFL in late December and January.