Ross DellengerSenior College Football ReporterThu, April 23, 2026 at 12:35 AM UTC·6 min readIRVING, Texas — After a 90-minute session over the future of the College Football Playoff format here at the Ritz-Carlton, one power conference commissioner exited a meeting room followed closely by one of the organization’s media consultants.
The two held a quiet but spirited discussion, presumably about what was just discussed within the room: Should the playoff expand to 16 teams or 24?
The conversation between the two lasted a few more seconds before they disappeared down a hallway with no real resolution to the argument — much like these meetings.
The CFP’s annual two-day spring meetings here this week produced, as expected, no decision on a future format.
But, perhaps for the first time, the gathering paved the way for a more intense holistic examination and financial evaluation of a 24-team postseason — support for which emerged last week during a presidential committee call that involved several high-profile CFP decision-makers.
However, there is one person who continues to support a 16-team field: SEC commissioner Greg Sankey, who as meetings wrapped up here Wednesday re-emphasized his past comments about expansion and outlined potential issues with any 24-team format.
Those include negatively impacting the regular season, athlete health and welfare considerations in playing more games, and the financial loss of eliminating his conference championship game (he declined to specifically speak on the latter).
One thing, perhaps above the rest, seems paramount in determining future expansion: Will a 24-team playoff really produce that much more revenue than the annual $1.3 billion from a 12-team field?
“It’s absolutely important,” Pac-12 commissioner Teresa Gould said.
“Is it worth it?” asked one CFP stakeholder here Wednesday
Yahoo Sports spoke to three former or current television executives as well as several media consultants to ascertain the truth. The result: No one really knows until a bidding process unfolds.
But before we get to the financials, let’s boil things down.
The 24-team format, championed by the Big Ten, includes several variations (some with automatic qualifiers, some with no byes at all). The one under the most consideration (but not the only one!) is an all at-large field where the top 24 teams in the CFP rankings advance to the field (maybe with an automatic spot for a Group of Six team).
The top eight teams would receive a first-round bye, and the first two rounds of games would be played on the campuses of the higher-ranked teams.
This would add 12 games — more than doubling the current 11-game CFP.
How much are these additional 12 games worth? After all, eight of them are first-round games pitting Nos. 9-24, plus four additional second-round games.
First, you should know that it is believed that ESPN owns up to 13 games (the current 11 games plus two more additional games). If that’s true, that may only leave 10 games up for bid — most of them first-round affairs pitting plenty of three- and four-loss programs.
From a television perspective, the worth of each of those games may be as little as $10 million, according to some experts, and as much as $25 million. Add in a few dollars ($50-75 million) in on-campus game revenue and you are left with a wide range.
Some say as little as $300 million and others say as much as $700 million. The key amount to keep in mind is $250 million — the estimated value of the 10 FBS conference championship games, which, in a 24-team format, would need to be eliminated and their amounts recuperated from an expanded postseason.
“You might not even make enough to recoup the conference championship game revenue,” said one person here.