AMELIA ISLAND, Fla. — After three days of discussion, the consensus around the ACC is that the College Football Playoff should expand to a field of 24.
“The desire with the coaches and ADs is to go to 24,” ACC commissioner Jim Phillips said Wednesday morning as his league’s annual spring meetings wrapped up.
Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark confirmed the Big 12 is also interested in doubling the field if the economics of expansion make sense.
CFP expansion has been a significant topic of conversation since ACC coaches and administrators arrived Monday for their annual spring meetings. They discussed fields of 16 and 24 (along with the status quo of 12) and which formats would likely yield the most CFP spots for the conference.
Conversations in the hallways of the Ritz-Carlton over the last few days backed up the consensus around 24 as meetings continued.
“The more, the merrier for me,” Florida State athletic director Michael Alford said.
Last summer, the ACC was not thrilled about an expansion proposal that would have guaranteed more spots to the Big Ten and the SEC than the Big 12 and ACC. So why has another Big Ten brainchild, the 24-team bracket, taken hold?
One aspect is the format. A model that guarantees the same number of bids to every Power 4 conference eliminates the first layer of concerns about fairness. One idea floated this week was three automatic qualifiers for each Power 4 league; the Big Ten in February detailed a model with no automatic qualifiers, 23 at-large spots and one guaranteed spot for a Group of 6 team. How the selection committee would choose the at-large teams is a separate question that lingers in a league that had its undefeated champion snubbed from a four-team field in 2023 and watched its best team, Miami, nearly get left out of the bracket last year.
Another industry-wide consideration is expansion’s ability to address a wrinkle in the current system. Because the top four seeds in the 12-team bracket get first-round byes, they don’t get a home Playoff game. Two seasons of buzzing home Playoff environments have shown the top teams what they’re missing. In a 24-team bracket, the top eight seeds would likely earn first-round byes but would host a second-round game when those are all moved to campus.
For Florida State head coach Mike Norvell, the push comes down to two factors: providing more Playoff spots for good teams and fixing a schedule that has put the transfer portal window in the middle of the postseason while stretching football into the second semester.
“I think for the vast majority of coaches — I think unanimously in the ACC — it’s about looking at the overall season calendar,” Norvell said. “Right now, the length of the season is extreme.”
Expanding to 24 teams will be the catalyst to condense the season if it’s done alongside other moves like starting the season earlier on what is now Week 0, eliminating second open dates, moving Army-Navy up a week and eliminating conference championship games.
The last part resonates elsewhere for financial reasons. The games are valuable conference properties, with the SEC’s estimated to be worth $50 million or more, so a larger CFP field has to make enough new revenue to offset that loss.
But league championships hit differently in the ACC. SMU was the last at-large team in the 2024 field after losing to Clemson on a walk-off field goal in the conference title game. Virginia’s upset loss to Duke in last year’s ACC championship cost the league a second spot in the field.
Although Norvell and Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney both say they love the game, they acknowledge that something has to give for the calendar to tighten.
“It’s got to change. It has to,” Swinney said. “Whether I like it or not, none of that matters. I think it’s inevitable and where we’re headed.”
— The Athletic‘s Justin Williams contributed to this report.
