ESPN Is Buying the 24-Team Playoff. Why Won’t the Group of Six Build Its Own?
Let’s get one thing straight before anybody in Bristol gets mad: I like more playoff football. UTSA is 6-1 and 3-0 in the American after Saturday’s win over Navy, and a bigger bracket sounds great on paper for a program like ours. But the more I read about the proposed 24-team College Football Playoff, the less it looks like a bigger tent and the more it looks like a bigger room in somebody else’s house. ESPN is set to own the house. The Group of Six gets one chair at the table. So here’s my question as a G6 fan: why are we still waiting for an invitation instead of throwing our own party?
First, what’s actually real
It isn’t official yet. On Oct. 15 the CFP said only that “constructive discussions with ESPN continued” about “potential” expansion to 24 teams. The next day, ESPN reported and the Associated Press confirmed a “handshake agreement” for a 24-team field starting with the 2027 season. A formal contract and board approvals are still needed. Under the current deal, the Big Ten and SEC hold final say over the format, and CBS Sports reports their deadline to decide is Dec. 1.
The reported format is “19+4+1”: 19 at-large teams, the four Power Four champions, and one spot for the highest-ranked Group of Six champion. Read that again. The field doubles. The guaranteed G6 access doesn’t move. The reported framework also wipes out Power Four conference title games and pushes the season’s start up a week.
ESPN doesn’t just air the Playoff. It runs the board.
ESPN already holds a six-year, $7.8 billion deal that makes it the exclusive worldwide rights holder for every round of the CFP from 2026-27 through 2031-32. That’s roughly $1.3 billion a year, per CNBC. To be fair to the folks in Bristol, other networks do show up. ESPN has the right to sublicense games, and it sold TNT Sports two first-round games plus, from 2026 through 2028, two quarterfinals a year. But that’s the point: ESPN decides who else gets a piece and how big it is.
The expansion talks worked the same way. Sports Business Journal reported that ESPN was already tied to the 11 current games plus two more. Only a 10-game package would have gone to the open market, and only if ESPN and the CFP couldn’t agree. They agreed. ESPN’s Pete Thamel reported the network will pay about $345 million more per year for five years. ESPN’s own reporting says it gets roughly $140 million a year of that back from the Power Four title games it would no longer air. FOX, CBS and NBC never got a real shot at the new games. As one Barrett Media column put it, “ESPN owns all the goods. Again.”
Follow the money, and look who’s holding the short end
Here’s the split that went into effect this season. The Big Ten and SEC each get about 29% of CFP revenue. The ACC gets about 17%, the Big 12 about 15%, and the whole Group of Five/Six shares about 9%. The Athletic estimated that comes to more than $21 million per Big Ten or SEC school and around $1.8 million per G5 school. SBJ noted the two richest leagues make up about a quarter of FBS but take an automatic 58%.
Add more games, and the pie gets bigger. But nothing reported so far says the G6 slice is getting bigger with it. That’s the part that should bother everyone from the Alamodome to Boise.
The G6 commissioners are already saying it
This isn’t just me yelling into the void. American commissioner Tim Pernetti said at his league’s media day this summer that “51% of FBS schools competing in football are outside the autonomy conferences” and that if the field doubles, “access should double for everyone.” Mountain West commissioner Gloria Nevarez told FOX Sports, “If you’re not playing for something, you’re not playing for anything.” Pac-12 commissioner Teresa Gould told FOX Sports her league “shouldn’t be limited by the format or by the structure.”
And Pernetti has already floated the bold version. This spring he pitched a Group of Six playoff for the conference champions who don’t make the CFP, played on the Tuesday and Wednesday of semifinal week. “There’s a lot of folks out there from the brand and media side that are really interested in knowing more about this,” he said. To be clear, that’s an idea being “knocked around,” his words, not a plan anyone has approved.
My pitch: take the leftovers to FOX, CBS or NBC
This is opinion. Everything in this section is hypothetical.
The G6 already has relationships outside Bristol. The Mountain West has a new six-year package with CBS, FOX and Kiswe running through 2031-32, plus a five-year deal with The CW. FOX keeps the MW title game. The rebuilt Pac-12 is on CBS through 2030-31 and NBCUniversal’s USA Network. Conference USA splits its deal between ESPN and CBS.
So picture this. The CFP takes its one G6 champ. The other five champions, plus a couple of top at-large G6 teams, play a bracket in mid-December and early January. It gets packaged as a new property and sold to whichever network wants live college football that ESPN doesn’t own. FOX has Big Noon Saturday and a reason to compete. CBS and NBC both carry the Big Ten and could use more December inventory. The CW keeps adding college football. That’s new games, new money and a real trophy. No more seven-win conference champions getting sent to a bowl with a sponsor name you forget by Easter.
Is it easy? No. The American is with ESPN through 2033-34. The Sun Belt’s ESPN deal runs through 2030-31. Those contracts’ fine print isn’t public, and it would decide who could sell what. Critics, including Awful Announcing, have warned that a separate G6 bracket could hand the power leagues an excuse to shut the CFP door further. That’s a fair worry. The answer is to keep the CFP bid and keep fighting for a second one, not to trade them away. But leverage only exists if you’re willing to build something without them.
The bottom line
The 24-team CFP isn’t final, and the G6 still has until the ink dries to push for more seats. Pernetti, Nevarez and Gould should push hard. But if the final answer is still one bid, one network and 9% of the money, then the G6 should stop asking ESPN’s playoff for scraps and go build its own stage with whoever’s hungry to air it. UTSA fans have watched this program go from a 2011 startup to a team that was bowl-eligible by mid-October. We know what it looks like to build something from scratch. Six conferences, half of FBS, and a TV market that wants more football? That’s not a charity case. That’s inventory.
Want a G6 playoff? Tell us your bracket. Follow @SASnapcount210 on X for every twist in the 24-team fight and what it means for UTSA.