The first year of the brand-new 12-team College Football Playoff is officially in the books. The Ohio State Buckeyes are your 2024 national champions.

But as the dust settles, one question remains: Is 12 enough?

In 2023, the CFB Board of Managers voted to expand college football with a 12-team playoff starting in 2024. However, after 2025, the current contract between the 10 FCS conference commissioners and Notre Dame athletic director Pete Bevacqua will expire. As a part of the new deal, these 11 could choose to rock the college football world once again.

At the Sports Business Journal’s Intercollegiate Athletics Forum on Dec. 3, 2024, CFP executive director Rich Clark announced that the CFP Governance is contemplating a 14-team playoff that would first arrive in 2026.

“The commissioners will look at is 14 a better number after they see results of this playoff,” Clark said. “How can we make it better? Fourteen is one of the options, staying at 12 is one of the options.”

So, what would a 14-team playoff look like? Would it be beneficial enough for the NCAA to be willing to expand the CFP again?

To answer these questions, we first have to look at the first rendition of the CFP.

In 2014, the NCAA introduced its first iteration of the CFP: four teams, three games, two bowl winners and one national champion. After fifteen years, the era of the Bowl Championship Series was over.

But fewer teams naturally mean fewer games, viewers and revenue. A disaster 2022 national championship game in which the No. 1 Georgia Bulldogs ran through the No. 3 TCU Bullfrogs, 65-7, led to the lowest national championship ratings of the CFP era (17.2 million, via the CFP).

So, after a decade of a final four, it was finally time to make a switch. The NCAA expanded to a 12-team CFP and immediately got paid right after doing it.

In 2013, ESPN acquired the exclusive rights for the CFP through the 2025-26 season for $5.7 billion, approximately $470 million per season over the next 12 years. On March 19, 2024, ESPN agreed to a six-year, $7.8 billion contract extension to remain the exclusive media rights holder of the CFP through the 2031-32 season.

That means that ESPN is paying over a billion dollars per year to host the CFP solely on its network, an event that it paid less than half the price for 10 years ago. The price tag has gone up.

So, if the NCAA is in line for another payday, what concerns would prohibit it from enlarging the postseason playing field again? It worked at the professional level.

In 2020, the NFL expanded from 12 playoff teams, with six coming from both the AFC and NFC, to 14, with seven coming from each conference. It’s been the league standard over the past half-decade.

Last January, the NFL playoffs averaged 38.5 million viewers for the Wild Card, Divisional and Conference Championship rounds. It became the most watched playoffs in league history, with viewership on a 9% rise from the previous year via NFL Football Operations.

So if 14 playoff teams worked for its big brother, why not the NCAA?

Well, for starters, the NCAA first needs to properly fix its playoff format.

In the 12-team CFP, the five highest-ranked conference winners receive automatic bids, with the top four receiving first-round byes, regardless of the conference winners’ rankings compared to other playoff teams.

This season, the No. 9 Boise State Broncos, the Mountain West champion, and the No. 12 Arizona State Sun Devils, the Big 12 champion, both received the final two byes over much higher-ranked teams.

Awarding lesser conference winners with an off week over some of college football’s most formidable programs feels like a disservice.

While automatic bids are likely to stay, as they’ve become a staple across college sports, the NCAA could use the 14-team playoff to put power in the hands of its powerhouse conferences: the SEC and the Big Ten.

In a 14-team playoff, both conferences would receive upwards of three automatic bids. In fact, in the first 14-team playoff proposal, the SEC and Big Ten each wanted four automatic bids.

In the NCAA, the rich programs and conferences continue to get richer.

More spots also diminish the value of the regular season and conference championships. It enlarges the margin of error for teams like Ole Miss and South Carolina, which each finished the season with three losses and failed to even reach the SEC Championship game.

So, while the NCAA may look to expand the CFP for a quick payday, it might want to hold its horses.

It could be a detrimental mistake in the long run.