How a 24-team College Football Playoff could change the Big 12

The Big 12 Conference will have a lot to gain from the impending 24-team College Football Playoff. It’ll also have a few things to lose.

ESPN and the CFP have reportedly agreed to a “handshake agreement” for the network to broadcast the concept beginning in 2027. The agreement isn’t finalized, so the exact format, schedule and other details still need to be ironed out.

An expanded playoffs would ideally give the Big 12 more opportunities to put some of its teams on college football’s biggest stages, rewarding programs that have invested heavily in building competitive rosters. More postseason games could also help the conference strengthen its national profile before leaders sit down for their next media rights talks.

But more opportunities don’t necessarily mean more money, and there’s no guarantee the Big 12 will receive a proportionate share of the new field.

“Oh yeah, me personally I like the 24-team playoff. I think it will make football more interesting, especially every game will count in November.”

BYU football coach Kalani Sitake

The concept will also bring an end to the Big 12 title game, one of the conference’s biggest money grabs.

So, is expanding the playoff to 24 teams a net positive or negative for the Big 12?

Ben Portnoy, a college sports writer for Fox Sports, sees reasons for optimism, even if some of the biggest questions remain unanswered.

“From just a pure numbers standpoint, it’s definitely helpful,” Portnoy said. “The Big 12 at best right now is probably getting somewhere between one and two teams into the field annually, and realistically, it’s probably closer to one.”

The Big 12 sent only the defending conference champion Texas Tech Red Raiders to the 12-team playoffs last season. The Red Raiders (12-2), though, got shut out 23-0 by the Oregon Ducks in the quarterfinals.

The BYU football program presents a good test case, as the Cougars have been just outside the CFP picture after going a combined 23-4 across the 2024 and 2025 seasons.

Scott Draper, the Big 12’s chief competition officer, said if the 24-team playoff started last year, the conference “would have had five teams in.”

And he’s right.

Under a 24-team format, BYU, Texas Tech, Utah, Arizona and Houston all would’ve qualified based on the final rankings from last season.

“We were the second-ranked conference, strength of conference, in their metrics last year. So I’m confident that we’ll be well-represented in a 24-team playoff,” Draper added.

That difference helps explain why Big 12 Commissioner Brett Yormark has been an advocate for expansion, even as the league weighs what it could sacrifice in the process.

More room for the Big 12

The CFP expanded from four teams to 12 in 2024, but the leaders in college football are already looking at another expansion.

ESPN reported that the proposed setup includes 19 at-large spots, the four Power Four champions, and the top-ranked Group of Six team. Plus, opening up more home-field games in the first two rounds means hosting massive postseason games right in front of home crowds.

The conference has spent recent seasons trying to establish itself among the nation’s top leagues following realignment. More playoff appearances would give its teams opportunities to prove they belong alongside the big bad Big Ten and SEC.

This season has also offered reasons for the Big 12 to believe it could send multiple teams to the playoffs. The Cougars and the Utes have been among the conference’s prominent contenders, while Texas Tech and other programs have added to the league’s depth.

“You’ve got a handful of teams like BYU, Utah, Texas Tech, Cincinnati, you know, down the line,” Portnoy said. “There’s enough people that you feel like you could get a couple of teams in.”

Heading into the final slate of games in October, both the Cougars and Utes remain square in the CFP picture — a standing echoed in the most recent postseason bowl projections.

The No. 6 Utes are the sole undefeated program left in the Big 12 at 7-0, following their 21-13 win over No. 14 Houston last Saturday, bringing them to 4-0 in conference action.

The No. 8 Cougars suffered their first loss last Saturday, but remain in the hunt with a big win over Notre Dame a week earlier in Provo.

More access for Big 12 teams would also help programs justify the resources they’re putting into football.

“If you’re BYU, and you’re putting in $20, $30 million into your football roster, and you’re going 10-and-2, but you can’t get into the postseason, that’s a really hard pill to swallow,” Portnoy said.

The potential upside extends beyond a single season, too. The Big 12’s current TV deal with ESPN and Fox runs through January 2030, so a bigger playoff could give the conference some serious leverage when it’s time to negotiate the next one.

“I think a lot of this is an exposure play,” Portnoy said.

More spots, same old problem?

An expanded playoff creates more opportunities, but it doesn’t guarantee the Big 12 will receive as many bids as fans might hope.

The Big Ten and SEC have the resources, depth and national profiles to place multiple teams in the field each year. Portnoy noted the biggest question is how those additional spots will be distributed.

The Big 12 could have several teams finish with strong records and still find itself competing with SEC or Big Ten programs that have more losses but stronger resumes in the eyes of the selection committee.

“Are you going to have 10-and-2 or 8- or 9-and-3 Big 12 teams that are going to be left out for, say, an 8-and-4 or 7-and-5 SEC or Big Ten team?” Portnoy said. “I think that’s sort of TBD.”

Simply making the field larger won’t automatically change how the selection committee evaluates teams or how television audiences view the conferences.

Still, Portnoy believes the 24-team concept could help keep college football’s current structure intact.

He suggested that giving the Big Ten and SEC more opportunities to get their teams into the playoffs could reduce pressure to make even more dramatic changes to the sport’s postseason system.

“Does it solve all of that? No,” Portnoy said. “But I do think that the 24-team field at least helps keep everything a little cohesive for the time being.”

Losing a big payday

The most immediate trade-off will be the loss of the Big 12 title game.

Power Four conference championship games are expected to be eliminated under the proposed 24-team model. The change would remove a major annual event for the Big 12, which has built a significant audience around its title game.

The 2025 matchup between the Cougars and the Red Raiders drew an average of 8.99 million viewers, plus another 86,000 fans packed into AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas.

Per Sports Media Watch: BYU-Texas Tech viewership averaged 8.99 million on ABC — 30% higher than last year’s Big 12 title game. Viewership peaked at 11.4 million. Most watched Big 12 game in 2025 and most watched BYU game in modern history. #BYUFOOTBALLpic.twitter.com/xSMWJJo9Ke

— Dave McCann (@DaveMcCannTV) December 11, 2025

Yormark, who announced Friday that he’s stepping down at the end of the season in late January, has repeatedly expressed support for expansion while warning that the financial and scheduling consequences must be understood.

At Big 12 football media days in July, he said the league needed to understand the economics of a 24-team format and what it would mean for the championship game, which he described as a “huge tentpole event” for the conference.

“That champ game is a huge tentpole moment,” Yormark said at Big 12 basketball media days last week. “So we need to replace that, and I’d like to replace it with some type of conference football moment.”

Yormark said the league was considering ideas but hadn’t settled on what a replacement would look like.

The potential financial loss isn’t insignificant. Conference championship games generate media rights and sponsorship revenue, and eliminating them raises questions about whether additional CFP payments would adequately compensate leagues for what they give up.

ESPN has reportedly discussed paying an additional average of $345 million annually over five years for the expanded playoff, on top of its existing CFP rights payments. But that money isn’t pure profit for the conferences. Portnoy mentioned most of that cash just makes up for what they’re losing by dropping the conference championship games.

“So, basically, there’s not a lot of new money coming in,” Portnoy said. “It’s basically just covering the costs of what’s being shelved by getting rid of the conference championship games.”

Even if Yormark pulls off a replacement, the conference still has to figure out if it can draw the same crowd and actually bring in good money.

The downside of going bigger

There’s also the question of whether 24 teams is simply too many.

Critics of expansion argue that a larger field could diminish the stakes of regular-season games by allowing more teams to survive losses.

“All the complaints from playoff skeptics in the past — about the damaged integrity of the regular season, not to mention the harm to bowls, would ring dramatically true in a way it didn’t with a four- or 12-team CFP,” wrote ESPN’s Bill Connelly on Oct. 16.

Portnoy said he initially had similar concerns when the proposal emerged.

“My first thought was like, ‘Holy cow, that is a lot of teams, and that’s rewarding a lot of mediocre teams,’” he said.

But his view has evolved as he has considered the potential benefits of giving more teams access to the postseason.

Cougars coach Kalani Sitake has also backed the 24-team concept. During an appearance on “The Rich Eisen Show” this month, Sitake said “Oh yeah, me personally I like the 24-team playoff.”

He added, “I think it will make football more interesting, especially every game will count in November.”

He pointed to the FCS and Division II playoffs as examples of how larger postseason brackets can create excitement.

When Eisen questioned whether a bigger field might reduce the stakes of a high-profile matchup such as BYU’s game against Notre Dame, Sitake pushed back.

“I don’t know how anyone can even predict it when we haven’t gotten there yet,” Sitake said.

For the Big 12, that argument has merit. A bigger playoff could create more meaningful games late in the season, particularly for teams fighting to secure a spot or improve their seeding. And if the first two rounds take place on campus, fans could get postseason environments that aren’t always possible at neutral-site bowl games.

Portnoy said those matchups could become some of the most compelling parts of the expanded format.

“If you’re BYU, and you’re putting in $20, $30 million into your football roster, and you’re going 10-and-2, but you can’t get into the postseason, that’s a really hard pill to swallow.”

Fox Sports college sports writer Ben Portnoy

“If you’re going to add a whole another round of those games, who’s not going to want to watch that?” he said.

At the same time, opening up the field means letting in teams that don’t really have a shot at winning it all. Plus, if teams feel like they can coast into the playoffs without scheduling tough out-of-conference games, we might see a lot fewer exciting marquee matchups early in the year.

A good deal for the Big 12?

All in all, I believe a 24-team playoff seems like a good deal for the Big 12 — as long as the conference gets its fair share of spots and protects its wallet.

But the Big 12 can’t assume that a bigger playoff will automatically bring a bigger share of the sport’s financial rewards. The conference will still have to compete with the Big Ten and SEC for bids, audiences and national recognition.

And losing the championship game would leave the league with a real business problem to solve.

Portnoy believes the potential for more access is ultimately compelling, even if the expanded playoff doesn’t resolve every structural issue in college football.

“I do think there’s something to be said about access,” he said. “The idea for teams in the Big 12, or the ACC, or the Group of Six ... to have opportunities to play in the postseason for all the money that they’re spending. I don’t think that’s nothing.”

A 24-team playoff gives the Big 12 a real shot to show what it’s made of. But turning those extra spots into actual titles, bigger paydays, and a solid seat at the table comes down to how the final rules shake out — and what the league has to trade away along the way.