College Football Playoff Will Not Expand Beyond Four Teams Until At Least 2026

The College Football Playoff will not be expanding any time soon, staying with the four-team model until at least 2026. This news comes after the Playoff committee heard recommendations from the management committee earlier this week.

The Playoff committee has met a few times in the past couple of months, trying to come to a conclusion about the appropriate number of Playoff teams. They also discussed "automatic qualifiers" and plenty of other issues. The Playoff Committee was scheduled to meet next week to discuss them further, but have now canceled that meeting.

The committee also held a meeting during the College Football Playoff week in Indianapolis earlier this year, but could not come up with a solution to the potential expansion. SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey had this to say at the time:

“It was described that we’re in overtime. This may be a 9-overtime game where nobody can score a two-point conversation right now. But that doesn’t mean you stop. If nationally we were aligned, we wouldn’t have walked out of that meeting with people disappointed.”

(It should also be noted that by not voting to expand the Playoff to 12 teams, the committee passed on hundreds of millions of dollars more in ad revenue for the last two years of the current contract.)

Looks like overtime didn't help and the four-team Playoff is declared a winner by default.

Bill Hancock, the executive director of the College Football Playoff, released a statement about the decision this morning.