College Football Playoff to remain at 12 teams this season

[Gerry Hamilton]

ESPN article 

https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/47704876/sources-college-football-playoff-remain-12-teams

ND guaranteed spot if they finish in top 12 of ranking 

Auto bids for all four Power 4 conferences

[Gerry Hamilton]

I'm betting the ACC changes their ACC Championship Game qualifications in some form or fashion 

[Jbro52]

Thanks to the Big 10 for screwing the sweet 16 up.

[utx2]

Cancel Ohio state. Why play that when only winning matters.  Play a small directional school and warm up.   If we play and lose history will repeat itself 

just not a smart decision to play this game.   

[Deej]

13 minutes ago, Gerry Hamilton said:

I'm betting the ACC changes their ACC Championship Game qualifications in some form or fashion 

To this point, it sounds like it’s happening already 

https://frontofficesports.com/acc-plans-tiebreaker-changes-for-2026-after-cfp-near-miss/

[Hornmatic]

4-8 would be preferred. 12 is already too many. 

[Texas fan in Georgia]

11 minutes ago, Hornmatic said:

4-8 would be preferred. 12 is already too many. 

12 is fine if they just eliminate the auto bids for the G5 . I could get behind eliminating auto bids altogether, but the G5 shouldn’t be given one period.

[Texas fan in Georgia]

30 minutes ago, utx2 said:

Cancel Ohio state. Why play that when only winning matters.  Play a small directional school and warm up.   If we play and lose history will repeat itself 

just not a smart decision to play this game.   

Sark already said they’d honor the Ohio st and Michigan games. I’d bet the ND game will be canceled. Though I’d like to put a beating on them. It’s gonna send ND a message.

[Nikolas24]

12 is fine if it’s the top 12 ranked teams at the end of the year. No auto bids. If there’s 6 sec teams. Fine. Just take the top 12 ranked teams. We want the best competition 

[NoDakHornsFan]

We can be done pretending it’s about the 12 BEST teams. I don’t want to hear that once this year.

[LonghornFan4Ever]

Ohio State is 100% a must win game with this news coming out.  If they lose to Ohio State, Texas must go 8-1 in regular season SEC play to make the CFP in the 12-team format and it's unlikely that happens.  Texas is not backing out of that game or the Michigan game in 2027.  They should back out of the Notre Dame home and home, but I bet there is some legal things to work out before that happens.  I'm assuming that is the reason that series has not been cancelled yet.

[Bobby Burton]

3 minutes ago, NoDakHornsFan said:

We can be done pretending it’s about the 12 BEST teams. I don’t want to hear that once this year.

+1,000

[Deep in the heart]

I'm OK with that. 24 was crazy.

[4thandFive]

58 minutes ago, Gerry Hamilton said:

ESPN article 

https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/47704876/sources-college-football-playoff-remain-12-teams

ND guaranteed spot if they finish in top 12 of ranking 

Auto bids for all four Power 4 conferences

RIDICULOUS that Notre Dame is guaranteed a spot when they pick and choose who they’ll play and refuse to join a conference.

[Bunk Moreland]

Big 10 only wants 24 teams because they are so weak outside of their top 3-4. It’s the only way they can get more teams in. Pathetic.

[SB21]

3 minutes ago, 4thandFive said:

RIDICULOUS that Notre Dame is guaranteed a spot when they pick and choose who they’ll play and refuse to join a conference.

Can’t blame them for working the system. It damn near guarantees them a CFP spot each year. 

[NoDakHornsFan]

I mean is 5 loss Duke any better than JMU? I get acc may change their conference championship but let’s be done with auto bids.

[rookemhorns]

The leadership of college football has always and will always do the wrong thing until forced to do otherwise. It's kind of remarkable how people come and people go, but they always side with stupid. It took decades to make these changes:

• Crown a champion after bowl games
• Allow TV networks to decide during the season which games to televise (it was previously decided before the season)
• Create a 1-vs-2 natty
• Allow players to be compensated for their labor
• Allow players to transfer without sitting out (how many players never made it to the NFL because they never got their chance?)
• Create a playoff system

Here's all the obvious things the need to fix:

• Eliminate worthless cupcake games (it'd be incredibly easy to compensate smaller schools with the additional TV money better matchups would bring)
• Revert to 2-minute tv timeouts (not even the for-profit NFL does 3 minute commercial breaks)
• Eliminate auto bids (G5 has been completely raided of both schools and players yet we still romanticize the anecdotal exceptions from the distant past)
• Create a relegation system so smaller schools can actually have a chance to build legitimate programs
• Finish the season BEFORE the portal / coaching changes
• Eliminate unlimited transfers
• Set boundaries around NIL and individual donors

Only an act of Congress could save college football. 

Edited 11 minutes ago by rookemhorns
a word