College Football Playoff expansion: What would a 24-team bracket have looked like last season?

Notre Dame-Iowa, Miami-Houston and Texas-Tulane would’ve been among the new first-round matchups

The College Football Playoff is set to expand to 24 teams in 2027, as sources confirmed to CBS Sports' Matt Zenitz that the CFP and ESPN are nearing completion on a new television contract for the expanded format. The specifics won't be known until final approval — the number of at-large teams versus automatic bids for conference champions — but the expectation is that the expanded format will bring an end to conference championship games. That means tiebreakers will become even more important to track in these mega-conferences, where half the teams don't play each other. While we await official details on the format, scheduling and everything else, we can look back at history to see what the 24-team playoff would look like and what kinds of teams it will bring into the fold.

The expected format would give the top 8 seeds first-round byes (up from the current top 4), and teams No. 9 through No. 24 would play in eight first-round games. If we go back to the final rankings before the 2025 conference championship games, we can see what that looks like in action. 1. Ohio State2. Indiana3. Georgia4. Texas Tech5. Oregon6. Ole Miss7. Texas A&M8. Oklahoma 9. Alabama vs. 24. North Texas10. Notre Dame vs. 23. Iowa11. BYU vs. 22. Georgia Tech12. Miami vs. 21. Houston13.