The new five-year, nearly $1.7 billion deal with ESPN also wipes out the Power 4 conference championship games.
The College Football Playoff will balloon to 24 teams beginning with the 2027 season, under a fresh five-year, nearly $1.7 billion agreement between the CFP and ESPN. The network stays on as broadcast partner, with this new money stacked on top of the existing $7.8 billion media rights package covering the current 12-team format through 2032.
The bigger bracket means a bigger calendar, adding an extra week to the postseason. It also means the end of an era for the Power 4 conference championship games, which will be eliminated after this season. The Army-Navy game is expected to slide into the second Saturday in December, the same slot conference title games used to occupy.
The announcement caps months of negotiations and arrives just a few seasons after the playoff moved from four teams to twelve. College football has been in near-constant structural flux since that 12-team era began, and this latest expansion keeps that trend going. What exactly the new 24-team bracket will look like in terms of seeding and byes has not been detailed yet, but schools are already bracing for a postseason landscape without the conference championship weekend they have known for years.