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College football coaches are throwing their weight behind a major overhaul of the sport, including pushing for maximum playoff expansion, potentially to 24 teams. Yahoo Sports reported Tuesday that the American Football Coaches Association (AFCA) voted last week to recommend expanding the College Football Playoff (CFP) bracket to as many teams as possible, eliminating conference championship games, ending the season in the second week of January, and protecting the Army-Navy game’s exclusive broadcast window.
AFCA executive director Craig Bohl confirmed the organization’s vote, though the AFCA hasn’t publicly announced its decisions yet. Still, coaches across the sport haven’t been shy about where they stand.
Where the Power Conferences Stand
The Big Ten and SEC have been deadlocked on what an expanded CFP should look like. The SEC has favored a 16-team “5+11” format, where the five highest-ranked conference champions receive guaranteed bids. The Big Ten wants a 24-team bracket, with ongoing debate about how those spots get filled. The ACC and Big 12 had previously backed the SEC’s model before support shifted toward the larger 24-team format.
One proposal floating around the Big Ten would give just one automatic bid to the highest-ranked Group of Six champion, with the remaining 23 spots filled by at-large selections based on CFP committee rankings. In practice, that structure would benefit the Big Ten and SEC most, given their schedule strength compared to the other Power Four leagues.
Georgia’s Kirby Smart put it plainly in a recent interview with Josh Pate:
“I just don’t know where that line of demarcation is. … I do feel like we’re going to make some of our (regular season) games maybe less meaningful, less impactful, but they’ll still matter in the grand scheme of things, especially toward the end of the season. I’m a fan of 16 to 24 because of the currency and what we’re measured by as coaches. I want to get my team in there for the opportunity. I want my fan base to be engaged. And it’s gotten to the point now that if you’re not in (the CFP), there’s no value in a good old bowl game. … So if we’re going to make it that way, we might as well put more (teams) in it and get everybody in and let them go play.”
‘Maximum’ Expansion and the End of Conference Championships
A 24-team playoff would add another full round of postseason games, creating 12 additional contests and effectively eliminating conference championship weekend. The top eight seeds would receive first-round byes, up from the current four, with the remaining 16 teams playing on the higher seed’s campus.
That’s a significant structural shift, and conference championship games aren’t going quietly. Those games generate serious revenue, and getting rid of them only works financially if the expanded playoff more than makes up for it. For now, the current 12-team format runs through at least the 2026 season, but expansion talks are moving faster with the AFCA’s recommendations now on the table.
The AFCA represents more than 10,000 coaches worldwide, spanning the NFL, NCAA, NAIA, NJCAA, and high school levels. It’s the sport’s primary professional organization for coaches at every level. Texas Tech’s Joey McGuire, New Mexico’s Jason Eck, San Diego State’s Sean Lewis, Montana State’s Brent Vigen, Michigan State’s Pat Fitzgerald, and Old Dominion’s Ricky Rahne were recently added to the AFCA’s Board of Trustees, joining returning members Clark Lea (Vanderbilt) and Bret Bielema (Illinois).
The Army-Navy Situation
Fitting Army-Navy into a 24-team CFP calendar isn’t simple. The game has traditionally been played on the second Saturday of December, which would clash with a playoff that needs to kick off that same weekend. One solution being discussed is moving Army-Navy up one week, giving it a standalone window as long as conference championship games are gone.
Army coach Jeff Monken has floated the idea of playing Navy over Thanksgiving weekend instead. The rivalry has been played every year since 1930, and CBS Sports holds the broadcast rights through 2038.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order earlier this year aimed at protecting the game’s exclusive national broadcast window.
The Calendar Problem
This is where things get messy.
The NCAA moved to a single spring transfer portal window in January, aimed at cutting down on post-spring tampering. Most coaches see it as a small fix to a much bigger problem. The coaching carousel, early signing period, and transfer portal all crash into the same stretch of weeks right after conference championships, and nobody has figured out how to untangle it.
Oregon’s Dan Lanning watched both of his coordinators take head-coaching jobs (at California and Kentucky) while the Ducks were still alive in last year’s CFP. Those coordinators were essentially working two jobs at once. Ole Miss faced a similar situation after losing Lane Kiffin and several staff members to LSU mid-postseason.
“Ideally, the season ends January 1st,” Lanning told NBC Sports. “(That) should be the last game. (That) should be the championship game. Then the portal opens, and then coaches that have to move on to their next opportunities get the opportunity to move to their next opportunities. … Our national championship game this year is January 19th, and that’s really hard to envision as a coach that’s going out and trying to join a new program and start a staff. It’s hard for players to understand what continuity looks like and where they are going to be at and to manage that with visits, the portal, everything else that exists.”
Next season’s national championship won’t be played until Jan. 25, 2027, a full 10 days after the semifinal participants last took the field. That’s a long time to hold a roster together while the portal is open and rival programs are recruiting your players.
Indiana’s Curt Cignetti dealt with a version of this last season, sitting through a long gap between the Big Ten Championship win over Ohio State and the Rose Bowl matchup against Alabama. His take was straightforward:
“Well, you know, it is what it is, so you make the most of it. The way we approached it until we knew the opponent? We treated it like two bye weeks, and now we have almost two weeks to prepare for the opponent.”
College football is also competing directly with NFL playoff coverage during that same window, putting the sport at a visibility disadvantage at the exact moment it should have everyone’s attention. Add in coaches finalizing transfer classes and managing spring semester roster logistics, and the picture gets even more complicated.
Coaches aren’t just frustrated, they’re exhausted. The margin for burnout has never been thinner, and for programs still playing in January, balance simply doesn’t exist. Staffs are splitting time between game-planning for elite opponents and re-recruiting their own rosters, a reality that would’ve been unthinkable a decade ago.
More access, more meaningful games, and more revenue all sounded great when expansion started. But the tradeoff is coming into focus. The calendar is overcrowded, unforgiving, and in many ways unsustainable if something doesn’t give soon.
