For years, the first weekend of December had its own place in the college football calendar. Conference rivals met for trophies, coaches chased a final statement before bowl season, and the SEC Championship in Atlanta often felt like a playoff game before the playoff even began.
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That Saturday is about to look very different. On November 9, college football officially approved a 24-team playoff, and the P-4 conferences announced that their championship games would end after this season. Now, ESPN’s Laura Rutledge has been hearing the reaction from people around the sport.
“We expected it, right?” Laura Rutledge said on November 9’s Big Day show. “When it comes to the college football playoff expansion, it’s been talked about. But a lot of people are upset about a few pieces of it.
“One of the main things is the elimination of the conference championship game. I mean, specifically in the SEC, where that game had been basically a de facto playoff game.”
The CFP Management Committee settled the matter on November 9, voting unanimously to expand the playoff to 24 teams from the 2027-28 season. ESPN also secured the rights to every game in the new format, with its exclusive worldwide deal running through 2031-32.
That gives the network all 23 games to broadcast. The field will feature the ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, and SEC champions, along with the highest-ranked champion from the Group of Six. The CFP selection committee will choose the remaining 19 teams.
The top eight seeds will receive first-round byes, while the first two rounds will be played on campus. Sixteen of the 23 games will take place at college stadiums. But the announcement came with an immediate change to the conference calendar.
The SEC, ACC, Big Ten, and Big 12 each confirmed that their 2026 championship game would be the final edition. For context, the SEC’s title game has been played since 1992. Its 35th and final edition will take place on December 5 at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta
“The Big 10 Championship game- the ACC Championship. There are so many of those that have been very proud pieces of these conferences,” Laura Rutledge added. “So for that to go away, I think, is a tough spot in all this.”
The ACC will stage its 22nd and final championship game in Charlotte that same day. The Big Ten’s 16th edition will be held at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, while the Big 12 will play its 25th and final game at AT&T Stadium in Arlington on December 4.
It’s crucial to note, though, that the conferences are making the choice, not the CFP alone.
A 24-team field means more games to fit into the season. If conference championship games stay on the schedule too, teams that make a deep playoff run could end up playing well into January.
The expanded tournament is set to start in December. The 2027 regular season will wrap up on November 27, and the eight highest seeds will get a two-week break before entering the playoffs.
There is also a financial calculation behind the change. The new ESPN agreement is worth $1.7 billion over five years. That money helps offset the revenue the Power Four conferences stand to lose by ending their title games.
For the people who built those events into their college football traditions, however, the financial argument does not settle the matter. The conference championship was not just another game on television.
It was the reward for surviving a long league schedule and finishing among the best teams in the conference. Rutledge captured that sentiment when she described the games as “a key tent pole of college football.” Simply put, Rutledge knows what those games mean to the sport.
She spent 2017 through 2025 hosting SEC Nation, becoming one of the familiar faces of SEC football coverage before moving into a full-time NFL role. She now hosts NFL Live and works as a sideline reporter on Monday Night Football, while continuing to cover major college football events for ESPN as a sideline reporter.
In all, the expanded playoff will change the value of the regular season. A team that loses a conference championship game will no longer have that defeat hanging over its playoff résumé because the Power Four will not stage those games. But will all those 24 teams be capable of truly winning it all?