Archie Manning shares his opinion on state of College Football Playoff

There are very few football players who are as closely associated with the SEC and college football as Archie Manning. The patriarch of the Manning family, which has now produced four SEC quarterbacks across three generations, Archie has seen the sport rapidly change over the years.

One of the most recent changes that college football has undergone is to the College Football Playoff. It’s completely changed the postseason for teams, and as Manning predicted at the Manning Passing Academy, it’s likely to expand again soon.

“That’s kind of what it’s all about,” Archie Manning said. “We used to want to have a good year and go to a bowl game. That Playoff thing is big. I think it’s going to expand. I think it’s going to be more teams after next year. So, that’s what you play for.”

The College Football Playoff went from four teams to 12 teams ahead of the 2024 season. However, further expansion quickly became a major topic of conversation around the sport. Many, including Manning, expect to see it expand again, likely to 16 teams. There are two basic models that have been widely discussed in that expansion. The first is a 5+1 and the other is a 4+4+2+2+1, which refers to the number of automatic qualifiers that would get into the field.

Just this past season, at a 12-team Playoff, national champion Ohio State played in 16 games. It doesn’t seem like that number is liable to go down anytime soon, which is another major change from when Archie Manning played for Ole Miss between 1968 and 1970.

“You wind up playing — we played 10 games and a bowl game. That’s it,” Manning said. “That’s all you could play. You can play 16 games now. It’s a lot of football.”

Greg Sankey shares chances that 2026 College Football Playoff will have 16 teams

While the debate about Playoff expansion has continued forward, SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey was asked about expanding the field to 16 teams. However, for the time being, he remained coy about the chances things change.

“We’re at 12. That was actually one of the other untold stories, is that 12-team format was established for ’26 by what’s called by the President’s Group by the Board of Directors, the College Football Playoff board. And their statement was, ‘Hey, if you can start earlier, go ahead,’ and we did in ’24 with good success. So remember, we’ve made an iterative change to just fill the bracket based on the rankings, rather than kind of this maneuvering what happened around conference champions. So that’s an improvement for 2025,” Sankey said.

“One of the issues is to look at the selection process as conference membership has changed, as the bracket has changed, as you have more pressure points on selection issues. The selection process really hasn’t adapted. So, looking at the criteria, how strength of schedule is analyzed, how we populate the committee. I think those issues are really important. And I tend more towards, now, based on a lot of in-depth conversations with our membership to like more than 12, but I think 12 is really healthy and I’m going to save my crystal ball for a moment.”