College Football Playoff already set to expand?

The College Football Playoff has not even played out for the first time as a 12-team invitational, and already, there are talks of expansion.

According to a joint report from ESPN's Pete Thamel and Heather Dinich, the brand new 12-team CFP could be expanded to include two more teams in the not-so-distant future.

With about six months left on the calendar before the 2024 college football season (the first year of the 12-team playoff), College Football Playoff Committee executive director Bill Hancock revealed that the committee discussed the possibility of growing the number of teams in the CFP to 14 after the current CFP contract expires prior to the 2026 season.

Nothing is set in stone about expansion, but with more revenue possible (a lot more revenue possible), the option will continue to be discussed.

Moving to 14 teams would mirror the NFL's 14-team postseason structure, a new look that began for the league in 2020. It is unclear if the College Football Playoff would utilize Bye Weeks the same way as the NFL (the top seed in each conference automatically advances to the top-4 of their conference; the college football equivalent could be that the top-2 seeds get the Bye and advance to the top-8).

Earlier this week, the College Football Playoff announced that it would be adopting officially a 5+7 model for the 12-team playoff.

With the 5 highest-ranked conference champions receiving automatic bids (and the 4 highest-ranked getting a Bye) and 7 at-large teams receiving an invitation, the most likely scenario each year would be that the Power-4 conferences (SEC, Big 10, Big 12, and ACC) would each get their champion into the playoff each season, on Group of 5 conference champ will be invited, and the other 7 teams will come from the Power-4.