College Football Playoff reportedly near deal to expand to 24 teams in 2027

College Football Playoff expansion is almost here.

According to ESPN — the network that holds the broadcast rights to the current 12-team playoff — the CFP is "nearing a deal" to double the size of the field to 24 teams and that the agreement "is expected to come together in the near future."

The 2026 season is the third year of the 12-team playoff. The playoff was implemented ahead of the 2014 season and had a four-team field for its first 10 seasons.

Further playoff expansion has slowly become an inevitability in recent months after the Big Ten and SEC have haggled over the future format of the postseason. ESPN's current contract to televise the CFP goes through the 2031 season, and the network will reportedly buy the additional games from the 24-team playoff.

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ESPN currently sublicenses a portion of the playoff to TNT, which has two first-round games, two quarterfinal games and a semifinal game this season.

The last major hurdle to expansion has been the future of conference championship games. The SEC's conference title game is the most recognizable and lucrative of the bunch, and commissioner Greg Sankey said this week at his conference's basketball media days that a decision on expansion would likely come "sooner rather than later."

Sankey was presumably speaking with the knowledge of the impending deal. The SEC has slowly come around on a bigger playoff field.

The official deadline to change next season's playoff format is Dec. 1, and meeting that deadline now seems like a formality. The playoff continued at 12 teams for a third season in 2026 after the Big Ten and SEC could not figure out what they wanted an expanded field to look like.

Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti had initially pitched an expanded playoff field with a set number of automatic qualifiers from each conference.

As expansion talks droned on and on, the four power conferences also became aligned in their conference scheduling. The SEC is in its first year of a nine-game conference schedule as each of the ACC, Big 12, Big Ten and SEC all now play nine conference games and three non-conference games. The SEC also requires its members to play a power conference opponent (or Notre Dame) among its three non-conference games.