The talk of the past year in College Football has been all about expanding the College Football Playoff from 12 teams. Despite spending just one season in the 12 team format, the leagues all felt they needed to further expand which led to a ton of offseason debate. The issue is for one crucial reason, the leagues weren't able to reach an agreement thus leaving us in the 12 team format for the 2025-26 season.
The Big Ten and the Big 12 appeared unwilling to compromise on any format unless there was a change in scheduling to where every conference was playing the same amount of Conference games. This Summer, the SEC obliged moving to a schedule with 9 conference games thus making it easier for the SEC and Big Ten to agree.
The ACC amends it's schedule setting up Playoff expansion
On Monday Afternoon, the ACC joined the SEC, Big Ten, and Big 12 by announcing they'll be moving to a schedule with 9 league games and one required game against an out of conference Power 4 opponent.
ACC Football ADs vote in favor of a regular-season schedule that includes 9 conference games and a minimum of 10 games each year against P4 opponents.
— ACC Football (@ACCFootball) September 22, 2025
Statement from ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips, Ph.D.: pic.twitter.com/5XPe4GVoa3
The move was heavily expected but, now that it's official, it's a great move as a whole for the sport. Notre Dame will fulfill the Out of Conference requirement for most of the schools but, for the others we should see more games worth watching rather than teams beating much easier opponents.
Now with the 4 Power Conferences all in the same scheduling format, expanding the College Football Playoff will be back on the table and could happen in the near future. All of the leagues have already discussed several potential formats and once the conversations kick back up we could move to a format with anywhere from 14 to 18 teams as soon as next season.
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