College Football
College football’s postseason machine just took another hard step toward a massive rebuild. Fox Sports and WSLS.com reported Thursday that ESPN and the College Football Playoff have entered the final review stage in talks tied to expanding the CFP to 24 teams. The reporting signals the process has moved beyond loose discussion and into the final layers of evaluation before a potential decision.
The headline number is the one shaking every athletic department in the country: 24. ESPN remains at the center of the negotiations as the CFP weighs the future shape of the sport’s championship format.
Neither report detailed a final vote, financial terms or an implementation date. Those details are still emerging. But the movement into a final review phase is the clearest indication yet that expansion is no longer just a hallway conversation among commissioners.
**A 24-team playoff would not tweak college football’s ecosystem. It would flip it.** Regular-season stakes, conference races and late-November survival games would all get recalibrated overnight.
The timing matters too. The sport has already stretched into a broader national calendar with conference realignment, coast-to-coast schedules and playoff expansion to 12 teams. A jump to 24 would push even harder into the NFL-style model college football keeps inching toward.
**Every contender suddenly gets a wider door. Every traditional power loses a little exclusivity.** That tension is now sitting in the final review room.
For now, the next concrete move is the CFP and ESPN completing that review process after Thursday’s reports from Fox Sports and WSLS.com.