CFP expansion: No decision expected from Miami meeting as leaders remain deadlocked

MIAMI BEACH, Fla. — With a deadline looming Friday, executives with the College Football Playoff did not reach a decision Sunday on whether to expand the tournament after a lengthy, in-person meeting on the eve of the national championship game.

The four power conference commissioners met Sunday morning but made no headway in negotiations on whether to expand the 12-team playoff to 16 or 24 teams. The Big Ten and SEC, which control voting power among the 10 FBS conferences and Notre Dame, continue to disagree on the expansion format. The Big Ten prefers 24 teams, while the SEC continues to stick with a 16-team format.

Commissioners hurriedly exited meetings Sunday as reporters crowded a lobby inside the Loews Hotel in Miami Beach.

“Still more work to do,” Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti said as he breezed past reporters. “Not done working.” 

American commissioner Tim Pernetti was a bit more direct.

“That’s up to two people in the room,” he said, referencing the Big Ten and SEC’s months-long disagreements.

CFP leaders have been at an impasse for most of the last calendar year, though every power conference wants to expand the field from 12 teams starting with the 2026 season. ESPN, the CFP’s broadcast partner through 2032, granted playoff executives an extended deadline from Dec. 1 to Jan. 23. It’s possible — but unlikely — that executives agree on an expanded format before Friday. If they do not, the postseason tournament will remain at 12 teams.

ESPN has made it clear to the CFP that it will not extend the deadline again, CFP executive director Rich Clark confirmed Sunday. Commissioners had not yet scheduled a follow-up meeting this week as of Sunday afternoon, Clark said.

Making things more interesting is that any decision may only be a one-year plan. The CFP’s executives are free to change the format each season, according to its contract with ESPN, the CFP confirmed Sunday.

The CFP’s new, six-year contract with ESPN through 2032 does not require a static format for the length of the deal, allowing executives the freedom to change the format on an annual basis if they desire, though each decision must be made before Dec. 1 of each calendar year, said Mark Keenum, chair of the CFP’s Board of Managers. 

“But that decision will rest in the hands of, again, the commissioners,” Keenum said. “They will decide and assess the landscape, fans, all the things that go into it. There are member schools, there are members that they represent, and they’ll decide what they think is the best interest for college football going forward.

“So, if the decision is to stay at 12 next Friday, that doesn’t mean you’re locked in for some extended period of time. It can change over the course of this next year and have a different format.”

Fans have grown frustrated with the lack of finality on the format after a year of back-and-forth among executives. Keenum, however, was quick to remind commissioners that it took five years for the CFP to decide to expand from four teams to 12, starting with the 2024 season.

“The fact that we’re having conversations is a good thing,” Keenum said.

Fan feedback on this season’s 12-team playoff games has been positive, according to the CFP.

“I know that there’s always going to be some fan that doesn’t love the bracket when it comes out,” Clark said. “We will never have 100% agreement that we got it right — that will never happen — but I do think that fans are really happy with the playoff and how it’s going. And whatever decision the commissioners make, it’s a way to make it better.”

A 12-team format in 2026, however, would also include different protocols. The four champions from the power conferences, the highest-ranked Group of 5 champion, and Notre Dame, If It finishes ranked in the selection committee’s top 12, would be assured spots. The provision for Notre Dame was not Included In the previous contract.

CBS Sports reported last week that the Big Ten has floated a compromise to the power conferences that would allow a transition period from a 16-team format to a 24-team format. The 16-team field would be temporary, possibly lasting up to three years. The stopgap would buy conferences time to unwind one of the sport’s most complicated obstacles: conference championship games, which are tied up in lucrative and overlapping media rights agreements through at least the end of the decade. The belief is that power conferences would eliminate their conference championship games in the new model.

The power conferences, however, are not yet biting on the Big Ten’s proposal.

The ACC, Big 12 and SEC continue to back a 16-team “5+11” format that guarantees automatic bids to the five highest-ranked conference champions. The roadblock remains the Big Ten and SEC’s controlling interest in CFP decision-making. If the two largest conferences don’t align, the playoff stays at 12 teams.

The Big Ten has strongly favored a 24-team field since August.

The Big Ten has also explored a different version of a 24-team playoff — one with just one automatic qualifier reserved for the highest-ranked Group of Six champion with the remaining 23 teams seeded strictly by CFP Rankings. The thinking is that a largely open field could entice the SEC, sources familiar with the Big Ten’s thinking told CBS Sports.

A 24-team field with four automatic qualifiers for each of the four power conferences was also discussed within the Big Ten, which was socialized with the FBS members. The ACC and Big 12 have long requested equal access, including qualifiers, for every power conference. A 16-team format with unequal AQs — four for the Big Ten and SEC, and two for the ACC and Big 12 — did not gain traction last spring and summer.

One Big Ten concept would include 16 on-campus games across the first two rounds, with eight byes awarded to the highest-ranked teams.

Quarterfinals and semifinals would remain at marquee bowl sites — including the Fiesta, Peach, Sugar, Orange and Cotton bowls — while an expanded neutral-site slate could pull lower-tier bowls into the playoff ecosystem. An increase from seven to 11 neutral-site games would suddenly make the idea of a Pop-Tarts Bowl playoff game plausible.

What is losing momentum is replacing conference championship games with playoff play-ins.

One 24-team concept would require asking Army and Navy to move their annual rivalry game from the second Saturday in December to the first Saturday. The plan has been rebuffed by both academies and President Donald Trump, who on Saturday said he plans to issue an executive order barring the movement of the game’s date while also providing a four-hour exclusive broadcast window for the game.

“We saw it and understand where the administration’s position is,” CFP executive director Rich Clark said Sunday.

A 16-team format proposal could include two play-in games, sandwiching the Army-Navy broadcast on CBS, without interfering with the four-hour exclusive window. A 24-team field would likely require Army-Navy to move its game up a week, but CFP executives expressed sensitivity to the issue behind closed doors, sources told CBS Sports.