Sankey Says CFP Expansion to 24 Teams Is Not a Done Deal

CFP expansion to 24 teams is not settled, and the most powerful commissioner in the sport said so out loud on Monday. The College Football Playoff opened a 30-day negotiating window with ESPN last week, the kind of procedural step that tends to get read as a signal, and plenty of people read it as a signal that a 24-team field is coming. SEC commissioner Greg Sankey does not believe that is a foregone conclusion.

That is not a denial. Read it again. It is a man who has spent a decade in these rooms telling everyone that the outcome they have already penciled in is still a pencil.

What is the 30-day negotiating window with ESPN?

It is an exclusive talking period. The playoff and its television partner sit down without anyone else at the table, and if a new structure or a new number of teams is going to be priced, that is where the pricing conversation starts. It is not a vote. It is not a format. It is a calendar item that gives two parties a month of quiet to figure out whether the thing they are both imagining is worth what the other one thinks it is worth.

The leap from "window opens" to "24 teams is happening" is the leap Sankey is refusing to make in public. Whether he is refusing to make it in private is a different question, and one nobody outside the room gets to answer today.

Why does Greg Sankey's opinion matter this much?

Because the format pen sits close to his hand. Sankey has run the SEC since 2015, and he was one of the architects in the working group that drew up the 12-team model in the first place. Under the governance arrangement that governs this cycle of the playoff, the SEC and the Big Ten carry the heaviest weight in deciding what the bracket actually looks like. When the man with that kind of standing says the conclusion is not foregone, the conclusion is not foregone.

There is also a fairly obvious tension underneath all of it. A bigger bracket means more inventory and more money. A bigger bracket also dilutes the regular season that the SEC sells as the hardest month of football in America. You cannot argue that your November is a gauntlet and then design a postseason where surviving the gauntlet is optional. Somebody is going to have to pick.

How big has the college football playoff been?

The growth curve is steeper than people remember, and it happened fast.

Two to four took sixteen seasons. Four to twelve took ten. Twelve to twenty four would be two jumps in roughly the span of one recruiting class, and that is the part worth sitting with. This sport spent a century arguing about whether a playoff would ruin it and then built one that keeps doubling.

checked the almanac: the 12-team field was approved in september 2022 with a start date of 2026, and then the same group voted that december to move it up to 2024. the playoff we already have was originally supposed to debut this season. these rooms move faster than their own timelines.

What comes next

The window runs its 30 days. Somewhere inside it, the sport finds out whether ESPN and the playoff can agree on what a larger bracket is worth, and whether the two leagues holding the heaviest votes want it at all. Expect leaks, expect athletic directors saying careful things into microphones, expect at least one coach to say he would play 24 games if they let him.

And expect the season to keep rolling right through the noise, because it always does. Syracuse and Pittsburgh open Thursday night in the ACC, a game that will be decided by blocking and tackling and not by a negotiating calendar. That is the part I keep coming back to. The bracket argument is a boardroom argument. The sport is still played in the mud.

What I am watching next: whether anyone from the Big Ten side echoes Sankey's caution, or whether he is standing there alone.