California schools are in the same conference as Florida schools. Judges are granting NFL players college eligibility. Athletes have played for seven schools in seven years.
Oh, and I almost forgot to mention: 24 teams are reportedly going to make the College Football Playoff field next year. Yeah, 24 schools.
As former ESPN broadcaster Mark Jackson would ask, “What happened to the game I love?”
While any of these topics could warrant their own column talking about its issues, the most recent — and, in my opinion, the most detrimental to the sport — is the expanded playoff.
The NCAA is reportedly nearing an agreement with ESPN to double the already extensive 12-team playoff to 24 teams in 2027. The announcement came just weeks after Week 0 was erased from college football existence, leaving an extra week for the new playoff format.
If only someone had warned people about this [in an earlier column](https://dailytrojan.com/2026/08/28/thank-you-week-0/)!
The decision takes away so much of what makes the college football season great. For starters, conference championships will become extinct under this new format.
The classic weekend where the best two teams from each conference duke it out to crown a conference champion, and potentially fight for a playoff spot, is gone after this season. Say goodbye to fun.
Not only that, but the importance of college football’s regular season is drastically diminished. With more teams in the playoff, worse teams get on the field and teams can afford to lose more games.
Back when the regular season used to mean something, it was the Bowl Championship Series era that forced a program to be one of the two top-ranked teams in the nation to play for the national championship. In the four-team CFP, no squad with two losses ever made the field. With the current 12-team structure, anything more than two losses means a team is likely eliminated from playoff contention.
The point is that in the past, teams had to be nearly perfect for a shot at the title, which makes sense if you think about it. But that’s thrown out the window with a 24-team playoff.
Now, teams with three, four or potentially even five losses have pathways to the postseason, making the best regular season in sports seemingly unimportant.
Just last year, a Duke team that went 7-5 in the regular season would have made the expanded field. Yes, a team that was two games above .500 in the regular season would have been in the 2025 CFP had it included 24 teams.
While I’m a USC student and fan, I can admit that I would rather watch an undefeated, heavyweight battle between then-No.1 Ohio State and then-No. 2 Indiana in the Big Ten Championship than watch a three-loss USC face off against a three-loss Arizona for the right to lose to Indiana in the next round. With an expanded playoff, we would’ve gotten the latter last season.
More games also means a possibly higher risk of injury. The five-game playoff format could force teams to play 17 games in a season, more than the 16 games that last year’s national champion, Indiana, had to play.
For reference, a team hasn’t played 17 or more games in a single season since the 19th century. Given that games during this time were often scheduled against a local YMCA, it’s safe to say that a schedule of this length in the modern era would likely be incredibly physically grueling.
While I wasn’t necessarily an advocate for the 12-team playoff, it never even had time to breathe. Everything said and done, it will only have had a three-season lifespan, far shorter than the 16 seasons the BCS got and the 10 seasons the four-team CFP got. So, why move on from the format so quickly?
It may seem like it’s for the money, but for once, that’s not the case. The potential agreement between ESPN and the CFP is reportedly $345 million annually for the next five years. While that sounds like a lot, it essentially cancels out the revenue from conference championship games.
No Power Four school would get more than $3 million as a result of the expanded playoff. That’s less than a quarter of recently benched Michigan sophomore quarterback Bryce Underwood’s contract.
If there’s barely any money in it for the schools, then why make this change? Well, it’s simple: More programs want larger access to the CFP.
While they’re giving out participation trophies, let’s move to a 138-team playoff; that way, no team is excluded from the field. I’m kidding.
A serious solution I came up with, though, is this: If you want your team to make the playoffs, win more games! I know, a shocking revelation.
I guess all fans can do is enjoy the regular season, while it still matters, and watch playoff-deserving teams make the CFP. Before we know it, we’ll be forced to watch 127-seed Sacramento State University face off against 130-seed Rice University in round one of the playoffs. Oh boy, I can’t wait for that one.
_Caleb Olguin is a sophomore writing about the ever-changing college football landscape in his column, “The Redshirt Report.” He is also a sports editor at the_ Daily Trojan.