Pete Thamel reveals which College Football Playoff format is ‘not going to happen’ after spring meetings

ESPN’s Pete Thamel got out in front of the College Football Playoff model that will not happen moving forward. Anything that has multiple autobids for certain conferences makes things a little more complicated for the average fan.

That’s what Thamel reported and could infer about where the College Football Playoff expansion is going. While there are rumblings of 14 or 16 teams, it’s likely going to be the latter.

Now how do you determine qualifiers? Well, keep it simple, stupid!

“The 4, 4, 2, 2-thing is not going to happen,” Thamel said on The College GameDay Podcast. “And certainly there’s some ways to go and things to figure out, especially the strength of schedule stuff … The point of the playoff expanding … College football is an unbelievable, regional sport that became national right around the BCS … For all its flaws, it did nationalize sport. So one of the challenges I’ve seen the sport have, trying to capture the I-95 sports fan, right? Boston, New York, Philly, you want to bring them in the same way you bring them in on the first Thursday of the NCAA tournament …

“You want to capture that casual fan, because you have the guy in Birmingham, you can’t get any more people to watch in Birmingham. And the idea of the 4, 4, 2, 2, 1, 3, if you’re sitting at the bar in Southie, trying to talk about Notre Dame’s playoff chances, it’s just like your head would explode, right?” 

College Football Playoff bound to make it simple

Good luck trying to figure that out if you’re a casual football fan. The College Football Playoff, as Thamel describes it, is trying to appeal to those from non-traditional college football areas. If you can make it look like the NFL, you might have a chance.

“It’s not Good Will Hunting calculus, but it’s just not intuitive to a sports fan,” Thamel said. “So basically, five plus 11 is like, we’re gonna take the conference champions and the rest of the best teams, which to me, is just a lot smoother if you’re trying to explain this …

“We get so in the weeds sometimes, and we talk about these terms and we socialize them … But I just think, as this transitions to five and 11, which it appears on the trajectory to do so and probably for ‘26 but not certain, I just think for the sport in general, a clearer idea of where it’s going makes sense.”