sport news College Football Playoff will expand to 12 teams 'as early as possible' with ... trends now
After years of calling for expansion of college football's postseason, the College Football Playoff's board of managers agreed to expand the field on Friday.
Currently a four team format, the field will expand to twelve teams by the 2026 season at the latest.
However, the board says it is encouraging commissioners of the sport and conferences to implement the changes as early as 2024.
The 10 FBS commissioners and Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick will reportedly meet in Dallas next week to iron out the details, according to ESPN.
The College Football Playoff board has voted to expand the playoff field to 12 teams, up from 4
An expanded playoff will culminate in a national championship game, won last year by Georgia
According to CBS Sports, the quarterfinal and semifinal games will be, 'played at rotating bowl sites subject to agreements being reached.'
First-round games will be held at campus sites on the second or third week of December.
The report adds the national championship will continue being played at various neutral sites.
Existing conference relationships with certain prestige bowls will be considered when it comes to game placement.
Under the original twelve team model proposed by the committee, the six highest-ranked conference champions plus six at-large teams determined by the selection committee will be put into the playoffs, according to multiple reports.
Realistically, those six conference champions will be the champions from the SEC, Big 10, Big 12, ACC, and Pac-12 - with the conference champion ranked highest from the so-called 'Group of 5' conferences being the sixth addition.
It's unclear how seeding will be determined, but according to a report from CBS Sports, the four highest-ranked conference champions will be seeded 1-4 with first round byes.
After that, the next four highest ranked teams - at-large or conference champion - will be hosting first-round games.
To visualize what that would look like, we used the Week 15 2021 College Football Playoff Rankings - the last week of the regular season - to show what a 12 team field would look like, based on the idea from CBS's report.
In addition, we've determined what two other options could look like: one where all 12 teams were all lumped together and seeded and another where conference champions took seeds 1-6.
Hypothetical 1: the current reported proposal - the four highest ranked conference champs get seeds 1-4 and a bye, the next four highest ranked teams based on CFP ranking get to host first round games (*=
