Should the College Football Playoff expand?

LAS VEGAS – Indiana enjoyed a Cinderella season in 2024, tying for second in the Big Ten standings and advancing to the College Football Playoff. The Hoosiers fell 27-17 to Notre Dame in the first round, leaving them 11-2 and with losses to only the national runner-up Fighting Irish and national champion Ohio State.

The Hoosiers were one of four Big Ten teams that advanced to the playoff, joining conference champion Oregon, runner-up Penn State and the Buckeyes, who went from fourth-place conference finishers to national champs in the new, 12-team format.

Tony Petitti, the Big Ten commissioner, wants to make sure the conference is guaranteed to have at least four teams in the playoff — especially if it expands to a 16-team format starting in the 2026 season.

“Big Ten football has never been deeper or stronger,” Petitti said Tuesday in his opening news conference at Big Ten football media days at Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino.

Petitti’s plan for a 16-team playoff — dubbed the “4-4-2-2-1-3″ model — is this: The Big Ten and SEC would each receive four automatic qualifiers to the tournament, while the ACC and Big 12 would get two automatic bids each. The highest-ranked Group of Six conference champion would receive an autobid, leaving the final three spots for at-large selections.

In addition, Petitti wants a mini-playoff in his conference to feed into the national tournament. On conference championship weekend, he’d like to see play-in games for a CFP berth between the No. 3 and No. 6 teams and No. 4 and No. 5 teams in the Big Ten, along with the usual No. 1 vs. No. 2 conference title game matchup.

“We feel pretty strongly that fans will really gravitate to a play-in weekend,” Petitti said. “Providing games that are do-or-die on the field will drive fan interest. … The weekend that we’re talking about where you would have championship games and across all conferences, meaningful play-in games, I don’t see how that’s a bad thing for football."

Last week, SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey said his conference would not support the Big Ten’s plan, and the ACC and Big 12 also oppose the changes. Rather, the SEC would get behind any of three plans: a 5-plus-7, 5-plus-9 or 5-plus-11. Each of those would have five automatic bids to conference champions, with the remainder as at-large selections based on 12-, 14- and 16-team playoffs.

The SEC and Big Ten wield most of the power in college football, but neither can do it alone. If the Big Two can’t agree, the playoff format likely will remain at 12 teams into 2026. An agreement on a new format is needed by Dec. 1, when a new contract with ESPN is due. The 2025 playoff will remain at 12 teams.

It’s easy to see where Indiana coach Curt Cignetti sits on the playoff issue. His Hoosiers just had their best season in school history yet heard questions about their worth as a playoff team because of their first-round loss and the fact that their nonconference schedule consisted of Florida International, Western Illinois and Charlotte. Cignetti wants to take the subjectivity out of a selection committee’s hands and instead have play-in results play a larger factor.