College Football Found More Inventory. It Lost the Stakes

College football used to be everything.

A Wolverine covers my left bicep. References to Michigan–Ohio State made it into my wedding vows.

By the final week of August, I usually can’t sleep. It has been that way for the better part of 38 years. I’m 44 now and started caring about this stuff when I was around five. By kickoff, I’ve already talked myself into nine different versions of Michigan’s season and spent way too much time arguing about it with people who are just as sick as I am.

This year, Week 1 almost snuck up on me.

I thought it was me. Maybe work and family had pushed football into a smaller part of my life. Maybe this is what happens when something you have loved since childhood stops feeling new.

I even asked ChatGPT that Saturday morning:

I’m usually so excited for college football. For the first time in my life, I don’t seem as excited. I won’t miss a down no matter what, but something feels different. What’s going on? Am I too busy?

I still love the sport. I’m still watching every Michigan game down to the last millisecond. The feeling around it has been shaved down one decision at a time.

No single change did it. This has been death by a thousand cuts. Conferences crossed the country. Rosters began turning over every winter. Bowl games lost their place. The playoff grew from four teams to 12.

Now the people running the College Football Playoff are considering 24.

CFP leaders formally began a media-rights discussion with ESPN on September 8 to evaluate doubling the field. If approved, the format could take effect as early as the 2027 season.

I can’t guarantee 24 teams will arrive in 2027. I can guaran-fucking-tee the playoff will keep expanding if the rights check is large enough. Every financial opportunity gets the same response: add more.

More teams. More games. More broadcast windows. More money.

Twelve More Games Are Too Valuable to Leave Alone

The current 12-team playoff contains 11 games. A 24-team bracket would contain 23.

That creates 12 more games for TV partners to buy, advertisers to sponsor, schools to host and conferences to split. The proposal would give the top eight teams first-round byes. Seeds nine through 24 would play eight campus games, followed by another eight campus games in the second round before the existing bowl rotation begins.

ESPN already pays $1.3 billion a year under a six-year CFP agreement running through the 2031-32 season. The network gets first dibs on the first two games added to an expanded package. If ESPN and the CFP don’t agree on the rest during the exclusive negotiating window, the CFP can shop those games elsewhere and ESPN can match the offer.

That gives ESPN several ways to play it. The company can buy the games, sublicense some of them or keep another network from getting them. ESPN is already turning its app into a broader home for live sports. Twelve more playoff games would give that product more subscription demand, more advertising inventory and more nights when fans have to open ESPN.

A 24-team format would likely clear space on the calendar by eliminating the Power Four conference championship games. Those games carry an estimated $200 million in combined media value before ticket sales and sponsorships.

The added playoff games need to replace that money and then create enough upside to make the whole exercise worthwhile. ESPN’s valuation will help decide how far this goes. If the number is big enough, the format will follow.

The Regular Season Keeps Losing Its Teeth

The regular season built its grip on Saturdays by being short and unforgiving.

One loss could wreck a title run. Two usually finished it. Every conference game carried the chance that four months of anticipation would disappear in one afternoon.

The four-team playoff left legitimate arguments unresolved. Programs outside the largest conferences could finish undefeated without receiving a chance to prove themselves against the strongest teams. Some probably would have had their asses handed to them, but the format left that answer to a committee instead of settling it on the field.

The 12-team field gave more teams a real shot. It also gave the biggest programs more room to screw up. A powerhouse can lose and remain safely in the bracket. Another loss starts a seeding argument. With 24 teams, even more contenders can survive a bad Saturday.

That keeps more fan bases watching into November, gives networks more games to sell as playoff races and creates more hope around the sport. It also turns some losses into inconveniences.

Michigan–Ohio State is largely protected from this. The Game is about beating Ohio State. For those four hours, seeding and byes are background noise. Even the national championship can wait. You just need to beat Ohio. Trust me, the feeling runs both ways. I was born in Columbus and spent the first 22 years of my life there.

Most games don’t carry more than a century of hatred. Their urgency came partly from what a loss could destroy. A 24-team playoff protects more seasons from one bad Saturday. That’s good for access, ratings and inventory. The Saturday itself carries a little less weight.

The Big Ten Has a Pacific Coast Now

Having USC, UCLA, Oregon and Washington in the Big Ten is pretty rad as hell.

Those schools create conference games I want to watch. Michigan going to Autzen Stadium is fun. USC coming to Ann Arbor feels big. Some of these matchups will build history and may turn into new rivalries over time.

They also change what heading out west used to mean.

For most of my life, part of dreaming about a successful Michigan season was picturing it ending in Pasadena. The palm trees. The Southern California weather. The Big Ten against the Pac-10 or Pac-12. Keith Jackson calling the game. Reaching the Rose Bowl meant the team had earned a specific place at the end of the season.

Now a Big Ten team can play in Pasadena in October because UCLA happens to be on the schedule. USC, Oregon and Washington no longer arrive from the other side of the sport. They’re teams you may face every other year.

The schools gained money and security. The networks gained recognizable brands across four time zones and more control over Saturday windows. Fans gained regular-season games that once looked like Rose Bowl matchups. Following one team through the season may now require three streaming services.

The games can still be great. They’re just not rare anymore.

The biggest rivalries survived realignment. Conference history became easier to bend around the size of the rights package.

That same expansion now helps make the case for a larger playoff. An 18-team league will produce deserving teams that never reach its championship game. A 24-team field conveniently creates more room for them.

One revenue decision becomes the argument for the next one.

The Roster Resets Every Winter

The connection between fans and players has changed too.

More than 3,000 scholarship FBS players entered the transfer portal before the 2026 season. You follow a recruit, wait two years for him to develop and picture what he might become for your team. Then his turn finally comes in somebody else’s uniform.

Players deserved the right to earn money. They deserved the ability to leave a program that wasn’t serving them. Coaches, conferences and broadcasters built a multibillion-dollar business while the old NCAA system restricted both.

The NCAA is now operating through a pile of NIL rules, transfer windows, court decisions and settlements. Direct athlete payments arrived before anyone built a stable structure around them.

Schools can now pay athletes directly. NIL collectives can arrange additional deals. The portal gives players a path to move. Coaches recruit high school prospects, recruit transfers and then recruit their own roster to stay. Fans learn a new depth chart every year and try to connect with players who may leave before that connection forms.

The NFL has free agency and trades. Contracts and roster rules create some continuity around all that movement, and the team’s identity survives it. The college game opened its labor market in real time. Everyone involved is still figuring out the guardrails.

The players gained long-overdue freedom. Fans got a sport that can feel like it resets every winter.

Bowl Games Became Leftover Inventory

Bowl season used to give nearly every successful team an ending. Even the shitty bowls were fun to watch.

The destination mattered. The matchup mattered. Winning gave the season something that could stand on its own.

The playoff turned the biggest bowls into steps toward another prize. The rest became games played after coaches changed jobs, players entered the portal and NFL prospects decided the injury risk wasn’t worth it.

Bowls still create extra practices, travel, TV programming and one final game for the players who participate. Smaller programs can still treat them as real achievements. Fans have also heard the sport call everything outside the championship race secondary for years. Eventually, they believed it.

A 24-team playoff would pull another 12 teams into the only postseason product the industry still treats as essential. Those teams get meaningful games, and the remaining bowls slide another step down the ladder.

That tradition faded one expansion at a time. More of the sport’s importance moved into the playoff until too little remained anywhere else.

The Extra Games Will Probably Be Awesome

A 24-team playoff will probably produce great TV.

Eight first-round campus games would give networks a full slate of win-or-go-home football in packed, hostile stadiums. The winners would then visit the top eight seeds, creating eight more home playoff games before the bowl rotation begins. A lower-seeded team knocking off a contender would immediately become the argument for expanding the field. If Alabama, LSU, Oklahoma or Michigan—assuming Michigan can find an offense—landed outside the top eight and made a run, the audience would be enormous.

More access has real value. Players and fan bases outside the small group of annual contenders would finally have a path into the championship. Networks will sell the hell out of it. Advertisers will buy it. Fans will watch.

Great playoff games can live alongside a weaker September, less meaningful conference games, unfamiliar rosters and another bowl disappearing without much of a fight.

The rights check shows up all at once. The smaller losses arrive over years and never get their own line on a balance sheet.

That makes expansion an easy call for the people making it.

The Streaming Wars Take

The playoff grew from four teams to 12. Realignment created bigger conference packages. ESPN built a direct-to-consumer product that needs premium live programming. The conferences need more money to fund athlete payments and athletic departments that keep getting more expensive. Now 12 additional playoff games are sitting in front of all of them.

They’re going to chase that money. Maybe 24 teams arrive in 2027. Maybe the Big Ten and SEC settle on a different number. The format and timing can move around. The incentive stays put.

Fans will watch the new games. I’ll watch the new games. The larger concern is what happens to everything leading up to them.

The sport built America’s best regular season with a small schedule, local rivalries, familiar rosters and losses that carried real consequences. None of those qualities produced a separate rights fee. Together, they created the obsession that made the rights so valuable.

The people in charge keep treating that obsession as permanent.

It isn’t.

I used to lose sleep waiting for the season to begin. This year, Week 1 nearly arrived without me noticing. Maybe that’s on me. Maybe it isn’t.