Let’s be honest: college football has never been a quiet, orderly sport. It is loud, chaotic, fiercely beloved, and constantly reinventing itself. For decades, the postseason was a source of argument and heartbreak—two teams in the BCS, then four in the old playoff, then a long, complicated debate about who deserved a seat at the table. When Ohio State reached the 2024 College Football Playoff national championship game and left with the trophy, it became the first program to navigate the 12-team field and win it all. That alone was a turning point. More teams had a path. More dreams stayed alive. And now, just a short time later, the sport seems ready to go even bigger. There is real momentum behind expanding the College Football Playoff to 24 teams, and Ohio State head coach Ryan Day is not resisting it. Appearing on FOX Sports’ “The Herd With Colin Cowherd,” Day made it clear that he is excited about the possibility. “It’s great for college football for a lot of reasons,” he said. “More teams are involved and relevant. I think it’s great for fanbases, overall.” That might sound like coach-speak, but it is not. When a coach at the very top of the sport, coming off a national championship, says a 24-team playoff is good for the game, it carries weight. It signals that the old guard is ready to evolve. It also changes the way everyone else thinks about the future. For years, only a handful of programs could realistically say they were championship contenders. The new reality is different. The new reality invites more teams into the conversation, gives more fanbases reasons to believe, and turns November into a month where dozens of schools are still playing for something meaningful. This is not just a tweak to the bracket. It is a philosophical shift in what college football means.
Of course, any change this big comes with questions. A 24-team playoff is a much different beast than the 12-team model we are just getting used to. Critics will say that too many teams cheapen the regular season, that a bigger bracket makes early playoff games feel irrelevant, and that teams with three or four losses have no business playing for a national title. Those concerns deserve to be taken seriously. But there is another side to the argument, and Day seems to see it clearly. Expansion gives teams room to breathe. It provides a cushion for the team that stumbles in September, loses a wild conference game in October, or goes through a brutal November stretch. In the current system, one loss at the wrong time can turn a promising season into a disappointment. With 24 spots, a nine-win team from a major conference can still believe. A team that lost to a couple of ranked opponents can still make a run. That does not cheapen the sport; it deepens it. It also changes how teams schedule. Right now, there is a strong incentive to avoid tough nonconference games. If you lose to a top-five opponent in Week 2, that loss can haunt you in December. So coaches and athletic directors load up on cupcakes, protect their records, and hope the selection committee rewards their caution. A 24-team field would change that math completely. There would be less to lose and so much to gain by playing the best teams early. That means more marquee matchups in September, more crossover games between elite conferences, and fewer Saturdays when fans are expected to get excited about a 42-point spread. More than that, it means the stakes stay high all season long. Instead of watching a handful of teams fight over a couple of spots, fans would see dozens of schools playing meaningful football right up to the final week. That is a better product, and it all starts with giving more teams a genuine chance.
Consider the example that is probably on Day’s mind. Ohio State and Texas played in consecutive seasons and split the series. Those games were everything college football should be: two heavyweight programs, a national stage, and the kind of tension you cannot simulate in practice. But in 2025, that early-season loss to the Buckeyes proved costly for Texas in a way that went far beyond the scoreboard. The Longhorns went on to lose twice in SEC play, and by the time the selection committee put together the 12-team field, those three losses were simply too much to ignore. Texas was left out. If the Longhorns had scheduled a weaker nonconference opponent instead of Ohio State, they might have finished with a better record, earned a playoff spot, and played deep into January. That is not a wild hypothetical. It is the razor-thin line between celebration and disappointment in modern college football. This is exactly the kind of situation a 24-team playoff would fix. With more spots available, a team like Texas could absorb an early loss to a national power and still control its own fate. The loss would become a learning experience rather than a season-ending blow. It would give the Longhorns room to grow, adjust, and come back stronger. It would also send a message to every program in America: do not hide from the best teams. Go find them. Schedule them. Use those experiences to make your team tougher. That kind of scheduling was once a proud college football tradition. The playoff era made coaches cautious. Expanding the field could bring the tradition back. And when teams like Ohio State and Texas meet in September, with both knowing a loss would not eliminate them, the game becomes even more exciting. There is no need for the loser to panic. There is only an opportunity to learn, improve, and prove that early losses can be stepping stones, not final verdicts.
For Day, this is not just a hypothetical discussion. It is personal. His own Buckeyes lost to Texas this season in Week 2, and that loss triggered the usual round of overreaction and panic from the outside. Inside the program, though, Day and his staff understood that the team was still evolving. They knew they were a different team in October than they were in August, and they wanted the chance to keep proving it. If Ohio State loses to Indiana this Saturday, and then drops another game in the regular season or the Big Ten championship game, a three-loss record could leave them out of the playoff entirely. That would be a painful ending for a team that, at its best, might be the most dangerous in the country. Under a 24-team model, that same team would still have a chance. And that chance would change the entire mood of the season. Instead of coaching in constant fear of one bad day, Day could coach with confidence. He could play more young players, try different combinations, and use the early season as an opportunity to build toward something greater. He could schedule teams like Texas without hesitation. He could tell recruits that no matter how challenging the road gets, they will have a chance to prove themselves when the tournament starts. That kind of security does not weaken the sport. It empowers the people who make it great. It also changes the experience for the players. There is a huge difference between playing with the pressure of a whole season on the line and playing with the knowledge that one loss does not define you. When athletes feel that freedom, they tend to play looser, faster, and better. The games become more entertaining. The coaching becomes more strategic. And the story of the season becomes more interesting, because it is no longer just about who stays undefeated. It is about who is playing the best football at exactly the right time. That is what every coach wants. It is what every player wants. And it is what the sport is moving toward.
Cowherd put his finger on that idea during the conversation. “Facing a great team early offers clarity to a coaching staff,” he said. “That’s what you really want as a staff. It’s hard to get those winning by four touchdowns.” There is a lot of truth in those words. When you blow out an overmatched opponent, you learn almost nothing. You do not find out how your quarterback handles a pass rush. You do not discover whether your offensive line can move a physical front seven. You do not know if your defense can adjust in a one-score game. But when you play a great team in September, you get answers immediately. Sometimes they are painful, but they are always useful. A difficult loss can reveal what needs to be fixed before the games that really matter. It can show coaches which players are ready for big moments and which ones still need time. It can also create a sense of urgency that no amount of film study can duplicate. Day understands that process better than most. “The way things go now, your team is growing. We’re a different team than we were earlier in the season. Indiana’s a different team than they were earlier in the season. So as you continue to evolve—you know you want to be playing your best football at the end of the season,” he said. That is the philosophy behind a 24-team playoff. College football teams are not finished products. They are constantly changing. A rough September does not have to mean a disappointing January. With a bigger field, the teams that improve the most get to show it on the biggest stage. They get to play meaningful games in December, build momentum, and chase a championship even after a few stumbles. That does not make the regular season less important. It makes the entire season more meaningful, because more games are part of a larger story. The team that peaks at the right time could be the one standing in the end.
Nothing in college football is ever simple, and the expansion to 24 teams will not be either. There will be meetings, debates, politics, and compromises. There will be questions about automatic bids for conference champions, at-large selections, first-round byes, site selection, and how the playoff can fit into the traditional bowl system. There will be concerns about player workload, academic calendars, and the length of the season. Those are all legitimate issues that need to be sorted out. But the direction is clear. The College Football Playoff expansion to 24 teams no longer feels like a wild idea. It feels like a matter of when, not if. And coaches like Ryan Day are not just accepting it; they are welcoming it. That matters. It means the people who know the sport best understand what a larger field can do. It means they see the value in access, opportunity, and hope. It means they are willing to trade a little exclusivity for a lot of excitement. For fans, that future is incredibly appealing. It means more big games, more national storylines, and more chances for an underdog to capture the imagination of the country. For players, it means more opportunities to finish their careers with something unforgettable. For coaches, it means the freedom to be ambitious without being reckless. And for the sport as a whole, it means college football becomes even more like the great American drama it was always meant to be. There will always be critics who say expansion waters things down. There will always be people who miss the old way of doing things. But the old way was not better for everyone. It was better for the same handful of programs. A 24-team playoff is a statement that college football belongs to more than just the traditional powers. It belongs to the mid-major champion that fought through a perfect season, the 9-3 team from a brutal conference that proved it could hang with anyone, and the fanbase that was told for years to wait until next year. This is not the end of the sport’s evolution. It is just the next chapter. And if Ryan Day’s attitude is any indication, the best is yet to come.
