There are unpopular ideas, and then there are ideas that look almost designed to test the limits of fan patience. The 24-team Playoff appears to be headed toward the second category. Last week, Bruce Feldman, Ralph Russo and the article's author asked The Audible listeners about a 24-team College Football Playoff, and 70 percent said they opposed it. On Wednesday, Greg Sankey indicated the CFP is closing in on a deal with for that 24-team format anyway.
That is the central tension here: the sport may be heading toward a major postseason redesign even as a clear majority of the audience is saying, in effect, we do not want this. The reaction is not subtle. The survey result leaves 30 percent in favor, which is hardly a groundswell. Yet the discussion around the 24-team playoff keeps moving, and the phrase “sooner rather than later” suggests the change is not some distant theory.
A familiar college football pattern
College football has seen this movie before. In 1985, Coca-Cola changed its signature drink's formula after two years of blind taste tests, then rolled out New Coke on April 23, 1985. By early July, a survey found just 30 percent of Coca-Cola customers liked New Coke, and the product was pulled. The comparison is not perfect, but the lesson is easy to see: a decision can advance because the people making it believe they know better than the public reaction.
That is why the New Coke analogy fits this moment so neatly. A 24-team playoff would alter the postseason structure in a way that reaches far beyond the bracket itself. It would change how the regular season is viewed, how losses are interpreted and how much room there is for disagreement about who truly matters in November. For fans who already value the regular season as one of the sport's defining features, the concern is not simply that the field gets larger. It is that the meaning of the field gets diluted.
And yet the expansion still has momentum. Sankey's indication that the CFP is closing in on a deal with matters because it suggests the process is not waiting for consensus from the outside. The sport's power structure is moving forward while the audience is still arguing about whether the idea is wise at all.
That is the uncomfortable part of this story. The numbers are not close, at least in the listener survey. Seventy percent opposed. Thirty percent in favor. But in college football, as in business, the loudest resistance does not always stop a decision once the people in charge decide the future should look different.
So the question is no longer whether the 24-team playoff is controversial. It is. The real question is whether the people shaping the CFP believe the benefits of expansion outweigh the backlash, even if the backlash is strong enough to make the change feel like a New Coke moment before it ever arrives.
