CFP expansion to 12 teams: Our 4 biggest questions moving forward

By RJ Young
FOX Sports College Football Writer

"Expand the College Football Playoff, you cowards!" I said. 

I wrote it down. I tweeted it. I shouted it in episode after episode of "The Number One College Football Show." And I wore it on a T-shirt during the FOX Sports Watch Party for the 2021 national championship while talking through halftime with Joel Klatt.

So no one is more overjoyed than me by the CFP expansion news that's being reported. In a move that changes the sport for the better, the CFP board of managers voted Friday to expand the playoff field from four to 12 teams by unanimous vote.

[College Football Playoff to expand to 12 teams]

This decision was likely spurred by the shock of USC and UCLA deciding this summer to eventually depart the Pac-12 to join the Big Ten, nearly a year after Oklahoma and Texas shocked the sport by announcing a move to the SEC. With all four programs expected to compete in their new leagues by 2025, presidents, chancellors and commissioners began working in earnest to reshape the landscape of the sport.

Here are four big questions that remain after Friday's decision.

1. Does this create parity in the sport?

Inside the 12-team model approved by the CFP’s board of managers, the six-highest ranked conference champions and six at-large selections will create the bracket for a national playoff three times the size of the current model.

This creates more parity, more opportunities, for all 130 FBS teams. It also creates more inventory with 11 playoff games being staged to decide the national champion.

This is by far the largest step toward identifying an undisputed national champion in the 153-year history of the sport. Had this model been in effect in 2021, Ole Miss, Baylor, Oklahoma State, Pittsburgh and Utah would have all earned an invitation to play for the national title.

2. What does this mean for the Power 5 Conferences?

One of the criticisms of the four-team playoff is that the CFP board of managers believed it wise to have a four-team playoff when there were five power conferences in the sport. With the 12-team model, all the major players know their conference champion has a chance to earn entry and likely will.

While the SEC and Big Ten have kept their cards close to the vest about whether they will eliminate divisions when their newest members join their respective conferences, what's clear is only their league champion is (basically) assured a spot in the 12-team playoff. This is likely the death knell for divisions in college football conferences.

If they'd like to get two in (as the SEC has in the past), they need to be sure their two highest-ranked teams play for the league title. Perhaps it’s best to think about this not as how it’s going to affect the Big Ten and SEC but how it keeps the ACC, Pac-12 and Big 12 at the table.

[How a 12-team College Football Playoff could've looked]

3. Does this eliminate the need for a selection committee?

The selection committee rankings are fine. But relying on them solely to decide who gets into the CFP and to dictate the pecking order for the remaining New Year Six’s bowl games? Therein lies the rub.

Neither of those things looks set to change with the highest-ranked team in the country likely enjoying every advantage of being the high-seed in the playoff and teams without a conference championship among the Power 5 conferences having to wait for the committee to rule on whether they deserve an invitation to the tournament.

What the 12-team playoff ensures, though, is we’re closer than we’ve ever been to every team that deserves to be in the playoffs getting into the tournament. I doubt an undefeated Group of 5 team misses the opportunity to play for the belt among 12 teams like it has in all but one year — Cincinnati last season — since the inception of the CFP.

4. Does expansion stop here?

For the foreseeable future, I’m sure it does. While I have been a loud proponent of a 16-team playoff — 10 FBS conference champs and six at-large berths — even I am willing to compromise to 12 under this new model. 

The point, for me, has always been that players should decide who the national champion is; not a bunch of folks in suits sitting around a board table or listing teams on legal pads 1 to 25. The scoreboard is the arbiter of who wins and who loses on the field, and I’ve always believed that is the best way to decide a champion in every sport.

What’s wild isn’t that the sport is moving to a more equitable model, but that it took more than 150 years for it to do so.

RJ Young is a national college football writer and analyst for FOX Sports and the host of the podcast "The Number One College Football Show." Follow him on Twitter at @RJ_Young and subscribe to "The RJ Young Show" on YouTube.