The Rose Bowl has agreed to a deal that will allow the College Football Playoffs to expand to 12 teams in the 2024 and 2025 seasons. It was the last obstacle preventing the playoffs from expanding before the 2026 college football season. The upcoming 2023 season will be the final one under the current four-team format. It was rumored that the committee gave the Bowl a deadline of this week to make a decision or risk being left out of the new College Football Playoff deal set to begin in 2026. The committee was always hoping to begin the 12-team format by 2024 and has cleared those obstacles now.
Source: CFP officials have been informed that the Rose Bowl has signed an agreement that will allow the College Football Playoff to expand to 12 teams in 2024 and 2025.
— Pete Thamel (@PeteThamel) December 1, 2022
College Football Playoff Executive Director Bill Hancock said the following in a statement after the agreement with the Rose Bowl became official: “We appreciate the leaders of the six bowl games and the two future championship-game host cities for their cooperation. Everyone realized that this change is in the best interest of college football and pulled together to make it happen.”
The Rose Bowl will host a playoff game in both 2024 and 2025 along with the five other major bowl games which include the Peach Bowl, Sugar Bowl, Fiesta Bowl, Orange Bowl, and Cotton Bowl. This deal will be renegotiated in 2026, but will likely still include these six prestigious bowl games. In September of 2022, the College Football Playoff committee voted to expand to 12 teams in 2026 but hoped to work out a deal to begin that format as early as 2024. College football has gotten even more exciting!
