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The College Football Playoff should and will most likely expand from 12 teams to 24 teams in 2027 after a handshake agreement with the NCAA. While it is unofficial that it will begin next year, the NCAA already agreed to move the start of the 2027 College Football regular season up a week, meaning that the days of Week 0 will be officially over.
Also, if the College Football playoff officially expands next year, each team gets 2 bye weeks to help injured players recover, since injuries are more common nowadays.
Why my support for 24 teams might be an unpopular opinion
It’s unpopular among the College Football traditionalists who believe that the previous four-team playoff and now the 12-team don’t dilute the regular season play. They still want games where an upset could be the difference between a team getting into the playoff or playing in bowl season.
They also argue that a 24-team playoff would erase that and that end-of-season rivalry games, such as Florida and Florida State, would be saturated with backups because those teams would already be in the proposed 24-team format.
While I enjoy the regular season of college football, the NCAA and the committee believe more teams mean more money to line their pockets, and who can blame them for not wanting to lose money. Additionally, having a 24-team playoff could mean more Top-25 Power-Five teams who could make a Cinderella run and win a National Championship.
Eliminating Week 0 and having 2 bye weeks
A major bright side to the 24-team College Football Playoff is ending the odd tradition of teams playing a week ahead of the regular season and having those games count on their record.
But if the 24-team expansion officially begins in 2027, Week 0 will be Week 1. Player safety will win too, as teams will now have 2 bye weeks instead of one to rest and get players healthy again.
How this impacts Syracuse University
The expansion would greatly impact Syracuse Football, as they would most likely become a perennial playoff team and also keep Fran Brown’s job as head coach secure. In addition, their Week 0 matchup in Toronto against Wake Forest will now be Week 1.
Syracuse has a very tough schedule to open up the season in 2027, with Wake Forest in Toronto, and then traveling on to Happy Valley to take on the Penn State Nittany Lions.
How this could negatively impact Bowl Season
A caveat to expanding the playoff is the end of the bowl season as we know it. It was already starting to trend that way, with players opting out of their bowl games to declare for the NFL Draft if their team didn’t make the CFP.
Now, they may have to play bowl games in the preseason, since most of the traditional postseason bowl games will be added to the 24-team playoff. That would flip the traditionalists upside down.
Although it was a handshake agreement, this year may have been the final year of the 12-team playoff.
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