The College Football Playoff is expanding. 

On Friday, the CFP Board of Managers — a group comprised of university presidents and chancellors representing the 10 FBS conferences and Notre Dame — announced they’d unanimously voted to expand the current four-team playoff format to include 12 teams, awarding six automatic bids to the six highest-ranking conference champions and six at-large bids. 

The new format will begin in 2026, unless it can find a way to implement the new format in 2024 or 2025. The Board of Managers is charging the CFP Management Committee — the league commissioners who were unable to come to a consensus earlier this year on the same format university presidents just hammered through — with finding a way to implement the new format before the current deal with ESPN expires. 

“This is an historic and exciting day for college football,” said Mississippi State president and board chairman Mark Keenum. “More teams, more participation, and more excitement are good for our fans, alumni, and student-athletes. I’m grateful to my colleagues on the board for their thoughtful approach to this issue and for their resolve to get expansion across the goal line and for the extensive work of the Management Committee that made this decision possible.”

The format voted on by the Board of Managers is eerily similar to the one Greg Sankey (SEC commissioner), Bob Bowlsby (Big 12), Craig Thompson (Mountain West), and Jack Swarbrick (Notre Dame A.D.) proposed to the CFP Management committee more than a year ago.

The Alliance famously voted no on the format then, but it’s since become clear the Big Ten had ulterior motives for railroading expansion then. 

The league said it wanted automatic qualifiers for the Power Five champions. 

The new format offers no such guarantees. 

The 12 teams selected will be the six conference champions ranked highest by the selection committee (no minimum ranking requirement), plus the six highest-ranked teams not included among the six highest-ranked conference champions. The release from the CFP says the size, makeup, and methodology of the CFP selection committee will “remain substantially unchanged.”

First-round byes will be awarded to the four highest-ranked conference champions, seeded one through four.

(This means Notre Dame will not be able to earn a top-four seed as an independent.)

Teams seeded five through 12 will play each other in the first round on either the second or third weekend of December. Those games will be held on the higher-seeded team’s campus. The quarterfinals and semifinals will be played in bowl games on a rotating basis while the championship game will be at a neutral site, as is the case under the current format.

“The Pac-12 is strongly in favor of CFP expansion and welcomes the decision of the CFP Board,” the league said Friday in a statement. “CFP expansion will provide increased access and excitement and is the right thing for our student-athletes and fans. We look forward to working with our fellow conferences to finalize the important elements of an expanded CFP in order to launch as soon practicable.”

Implemented in 2014 to replace the BCS system, the CFP has been just outside the reach of the Pac-12 for five years. The last team from the Pac-12 to make the field was Washington in 2016. 

Alabama leads all teams with seven appearances in eight years. The SEC has made every CFP field, the Big Ten has made six of eight. 

An expanded field would theoretically give more access, but it would also open the door to the SEC further monopolizing the bids. The league has gotten multiple teams in twice since 2017. Had the new system been in place, the SEC would have received three bids in 2014, 2017, 2019, and 2021; it would have gotten four in 2018 and 2020. 

Oregon and Arizona would have made the field in 2014. 

Stanford would have made it in 2015. 

Washington, USC, and Colorado would have earned spots in 2016. 

USC and Washington would have earned spots in 2017. 

Washington would have been the lone representative in 2018.

Oregon and Utah would have made it in 2019. 

The Pac-12 would have been shut out in 2020, but Utah would have been the representative in 2021.