Texas Is Poised to Take Over College Football in a 24-Team Playoff Era

The College Football Playoff is expanding…again. ESPN’s Pete Thamel reported on Tuesday that the CFP is “nearing a deal to expand to 24 teams, per sources. The new format will start in 2027 and is expected to come together in the near future, pending final approvals.”  

This is another seismic change for a sport that seemingly lives in flux. A person who fell into a coma in 2019 and came out of it today wouldn’t recognize the current college football landscape.

The players get paid by the university. Those same players can transfer without penalty. Cal is in the Atlantic Coast Conference. Texas State is in the Pacific Coast Conference. The playoff has expanded from four to 12 and is about to bloat to 24. A punter from West Virginia is on every show.

The vocal public is against the move. Think Windows 8 or Netflix’s Qwikster or the Sonic the Hedgehog release in 2006. Because despite the changes listed above, the sport is still thriving and one of the reasons is because the regular season matters more than in professional sports precisely because the playoff bracket is exclusionary.

Change is the only constant in college football, and a lot of that change has flown in the face of what the customers want. But with change comes opportunity. And no one stands to benefit more from a 24-team playoff than the state of Texas.

Five different programs from the Lone Star State – TCU, Texas, SMU, Texas A&M, and Texas Tech – reached the CFP since 2020. Texas made it twice – 2023 and 2024 – so that means the state has been represented six times over the last six seasons. If the playoff would’ve been at 24 since 2020, that number grows to 13.

Texas would’ve made it five of the last six years with 2021 being the lone exemption. Texas A&M would’ve first reached it in 2020. SMU would’ve made it initially in 2023. Baylor would’ve gone in 2021 and Houston would’ve reached the CFP twice. And that 13 number is with UTSA and North Texas finishing in 25^th once each since 2020.

Six Texas programs were ranked in the final AP Poll of 2025 with North Texas and TCU sneaking in at 24 and 25, respectively. Four teams reside inside the AP Top 25 heading into Week 7 and two of them – Houston at 20 and SMU at 24 – would be just inside the new 24-team threshold.

The teams inside Texas have already taken advantage of the new landscape of college football. Programs can now spend their way into relevance and we’ve seen SMU and Texas Tech splash money around and lead CFP runs. Houston is now in the Big 12 and thriving under Willie Fritz. TCU was in the national championship game four seasons ago. Baylor won the Big 12 and beat Ole Miss in the Sugar Bowl the year before that.

This state is no longer Texas, Texas A&M, and then everyone else. The transfer portal allows programs like SMU, Houston, and Texas Tech to acquire top talent, which by-and-large comes from former Texas high school products returning home after stops at bigger schools where it didn’t work out or smaller schools that they outperformed.

The combination of a strong economy and motivated boosters who are passionate about football gives the state another advantage. There are rich people attached to every university in the FBS, but not all of them are diehard college football fans willing to open up the checkbook for an edge rusher.

“I think every school in the state of Texas has an advantage because we have a growing economy,” Texas Tech mega booster Cody Campbell told me. “We have people who love football in the state of Texas, too. You’re going to have donors at every school with the passion and the capacity to give (to the football team) because everybody has made a lot of money over the last 10, 15 years.”

The state would make up nearly 17 percent of the 24-team field if the season ended today. Five of the seven Power Four teams have made it to the CFP since 2022 and the two that haven’t – Baylor and Houston – would have if the 24-team field already existed in 2021. Two of the six G6 programs – UTSA and North Texas – were right on the doorstep.

We have entered a golden era of college football in the state of Texas. Three of the top nine teams in the FCS are Texas-based programs. UTPB is ranked in DII Top 25. Trinity and Hardin-Simmons are in the Top 10 of the latest DIII Top 25.  

Texas is taking over college football, at least in terms of sheer numbers. The next step in the evolution – and the only real way to become the epicenter of college football – is to win more national championships.