Another round of College Football Playoff expansion probably wouldn’t increase Ohio State’s likelihood of winning national championships, but Ohio State athletic director Ross Bjork still believes the CFP should expand again.
From an on-field standpoint, the CFP is already as big as it needs to be for Ohio State. Since the College Football Playoff started in 2014, Ohio State has finished in the top seven of the final CFP rankings every year. The expansion from four teams to 12 came just in time for the 2024 Buckeyes, who wouldn’t have made a four-team playoff but went on to win the national championship as the sixth-ranked team (No. 8 seed) entering the CFP. But Ohio State – which was eliminated by 10th-ranked Miami in the quarterfinals as the No. 2 seed in 2025 – was arguably better off with the four-team format, as the Buckeyes made five of the 10 four-team playoffs.
“Selfishly, we should say, let's just go back to four,” Bjork said. “Selfishly.”
That said, Bjork believes another round of CFP expansion would be beneficial for college football as a whole, citing the financial incentives of further expansion as well as the value of keeping more teams alive in the playoff race through the end of the season.
“I'm a believer in expansion. I think it's good for the game of football,” Bjork told Eleven Warriors this week. “The games have never been more popular. … The fact that we have content that is valuable, live sporting content in today's environment where everything's sort of on demand, has never been more valuable. Producing more content produces more revenue, which we can give back to the players. I'm all for that side of the equation.
“Now the competitive piece is, look, Ohio State's always been in the conversation. … But I think (the CFP should expand) for the greater whole of the enterprise of college sports and the commercial activity, the content, the TV negotiations. I think it keeps the regular season more alive. If more teams are in the mix, these games are going to mean so much more than they already do, which again drives the value.”
While there are plenty of college football fans who believe the playoff has already expanded enough – or more than enough – another round of expansion seems likely to happen in the near future. The question that continues to loom over expansion talks is just how much the playoff should expand.
The Big Ten is in favor of doubling the playoff field to 24 teams. ESPN’s Pete Thamel reported Friday that the conference is circulating an internal document outlining what a 24-team playoff could look like. Conference championship games would be eliminated, the first two rounds of the CFP would be played on home teams’ campuses and automatic bids would be eliminated with the exception of one guaranteed berth for a non-Power 4 team.
NEW: An internal Big Ten document explores a 24-team College Football Playoff. It offers a peek at what that model could look like, as another off-season of CFP discussion is set to unfold. Details here: https://t.co/on2sqej1H8 pic.twitter.com/j6twmdqyFp
— Pete Thamel (@PeteThamel) February 13, 2026
With the deadline to expand for 2026 now passed, the Big Ten’s proposal calls for a 16-team playoff in 2027 and 2028, with five guaranteed berths for conference champions as there are in the current 12-team format, before expanding to 24 teams in 2029. The SEC reportedly prefers to limit expansion to only 16 teams, which resulted in the two conferences – which jointly hold the power to determine future CFP formats – failing to agree on a new playoff format for 2026. The Big Ten is seemingly proposing the two-step increase from 12 to 16 to 24 in hopes of earning the SEC’s approval, describing its proposal as a “format compromise” in the document shared with Big Ten athletic directors and head coaches.
Bjork says he’s fine with either model, but hopes the conferences move with urgency to agree on a new format.
“I can live with 16, I can live with 20, 24, whatever the number is, but I just think that it's too valuable right now in the current climate to overlook not expanding,” Bjork said. “I think we need to expand sooner rather than later. The good thing is, even though we're going to stay at 12 for the 2026 season, that doesn't shut off any expansion talks for the ’27 season. So talks are going to continue, conversations are going to continue, but I just think that given where we are in this landscape and the fact that the product is so valuable, let's create more compelling content and let's get to the right spot.”
It’s not hard to see why Bjork wants the CFP to maximize its revenue. While Ohio State athletics brought in more than $336 million in revenue during the 2025 fiscal year, Ohio State athletics also spent more than $320 million during those 12 months, and Bjork expects the athletic department’s budget to remain above $300 million annually going forward. As the cost of competing for national championships only gets higher in the era of revenue sharing and unlimited coaching staffs, increased TV revenue from an expanded CFP could go a long way. A 24-team CFP would create 12 playoff games, only two of which would automatically be owned by ESPN, opening up 10 more CFP games to be bid on by TV networks.
“I think we need to expand sooner rather than later.”– Ross Bjork on College Football Playoff expansion
An expanded playoff would allow more mediocre teams into the CFP – for example, Iowa would have made last season’s CFP despite going 8-4 – and decrease the value of a dominant regular season. It would guarantee that even the best teams during the regular season would have to win four or more playoff games to win a national championship, and that stands to benefit teams that aren’t currently making the CFP regularly far more than it will benefit Ohio State.
But Bjork expects Ohio State to be an annual championship contender no matter what the CFP format is, and he believes the positives of CFP expansion outweigh the negatives.
“Ohio State's going to be in the mix. We're one of those programs that has consistency. And so that's what's exciting about the opportunity to expand, create more compelling matchups, and create more inventory that our fans can grab onto,” Bjork said.
