If there’s one truth about college football these days, it’s that nothing stays the same for very long. Perhaps the only constant in this wild, wacky, weird modern era of the sport is that nothing should be considered constant at all. Adaptation — from roster management, to revenue sharing to NIL — continues to rule the day in an environment that, more often than not, feels devoid of rules entirely.
Nothing and nobody is immune to this, which means even the College Football Playoff format is fiercely debated on what feels like an annual basis. Is the 12-team structure working? Should the field expand to 16 teams? What about a 24-team model? Do schools from outside the power conferences deserve to be included? How should the sport treat independents like Notre Dame?
The questions feel endless; the solutions limitless. Which is why our trio of experts at FOX Sports gathered for a discussion about what to keep and what to change after two years of the current layout:
1. What is one thing you’d change about the CFP format?
RJ Young: I’d extend the College Football Playoff to 24 teams.
In that model, I’d ensure that 16 games in the expanded CFP are played on campus, with the highest seeds earning the opportunity to host at least one of those games. First-round byes, meanwhile, have proven to be far less advantageous than intended: teams receiving them are just 1–8 against opponents that played the previous week.
Given the volatility the sport has experienced over the past two seasons — with three Group of 6 programs (Boise State, Tulane and James Madison) earning CFP berths ahead of brand-name teams like USC, Wisconsin and Florida — there’s an appetite for expanding access to programs that have never had a path to a consensus national title. There’s also a growing desire to give tradition-rich schools another, fairer opportunity to compete for a championship through the most democratized postseason format the sport has ever seen.
Tulane quarterback Jake Retzlaff #12 celebrates against North Texas. (Photo by Michael DeMocker/Getty Images)
Laken Litman: I’m Team Dan Lanning on this one. The Oregon head coach recently suggested that the season should end on Jan. 1 every year, a shift that would require playoff games to be played every weekend until the champion is crowned. The change would bring much-needed clarity to the calendar and eliminate the awkward overlap between the postseason and the transfer portal.
It would also mean doing away with first-round byes, which have increasingly become a disadvantage for higher-seeded teams. A cleaner, more compact postseason would also benefit programs whose coaches are moving on to new opportunities.
Head coach Dan Lanning of the Oregon Ducks leads his team onto the field. (Photo by Soobum Im/Getty Images)
Michael Cohen: The first two editions of a 12-team playoff have shown that there’s nothing better than hosting opening-round games at on-campus venues. Think about the atmospheres at Notre Dame and Ohio State in 2024, with the former blanketed in fresh snow and the latter invaded by scores of Tennessee fans as Buckeye faithful protested what was, at that time, head coach Ryan Day’s fourth consecutive loss to Michigan. Then this year, with a revamped seeding process, the environments at Texas A&M, Ole Miss, Oregon and Oklahoma delivered some electric scenes while showcasing everything that makes this sport great.
Moving forward, quarterfinal games must be played at on-campus venues, too, so the teams that earned byes can be rewarded for their great seasons and more local economies can receive a boost.
2. What is one thing you’d keep from the current format moving forward?
Laken Litman: This probably goes without saying, but the No. 1 thing I’d keep — and I think most people would agree — is first-round games on campus. It’s the best part of the entire CFP: seeing the traditions of different schools come alive, and watching fans who might have never set foot on those campuses experience them for the first time.
Some of the most memorable moments so far have come in those settings, from the snowy conditions during Indiana and Notre Dame’s matchup in South Bend in the 2024 playoff, to Miami fans getting a firsthand taste of just how loud Texas A&M’s Kyle Field can be during the 2025 playoff.
Texas A&M quarterback Marcel Reed #10 celebrates with fans. (Photo by Tyler Kaufman/Getty Images)
RJ Young: Straight seeding.
It was a change from the first year of the CFP to the second, and it eliminated the disconnect between rankings and seeding that complicated the format early on. The matchup in Monday’s national championship game is a perfect example: Indiana enters as the No. 1 team in the rankings and the No. 1 seed, while Miami is both the No. 10-ranked team and the No. 10 seed.
That alignment is easy to understand and avoids the kind of confusion we saw in the 2024 CFP, when higher-ranked teams were sometimes forced to play lower-seeded opponents that were actually ranked ahead of them. If that sounds confusing, it’s because it was.
Michael Cohen: The 12-team field is great and deserves a few more years to breathe before any expansion efforts are made. If there’s a trend to be gleaned from the first two iterations of this current structure, it’s that college football doesn’t have anywhere close to a dozen teams capable of winning the national championship in a given year.
In 2024, the average margin of victory from the opening round was 19.3 points per game, while the average margin in the quarterfinals was 14 points per game. This year, the average margin of victory from the opening round was 16.3 points per game, while the average margin in the quarterfinals was 18.3 points per game. Adding more teams with worse résumés than those that already would have qualified for a 12-team format isn’t going to make the overall product more competitive.
Laken Litman covers college football, college basketball and soccer for FOX Sports. She is the author of “Strong Like a Woman,” published in spring 2022 to mark the 50th anniversary of Title IX. Follow her at @LakenLitman.
Michael Cohen covers college football and college basketball for FOX Sports. Follow him at @Michael_Cohen13.
RJ Young is a national college football writer and analyst for FOX Sports. Follow him @RJ_Young.
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