On the latest Pate State Speaker Series, Kirby Smart flipped the script on Josh Pate, asking what his stance is against the 24-playoff format. The response was that ‘scarcity matters’. If everyone gets in, what’s the regular season worth? The Georgia head coach didn’t disagree, but then he dropped an example with Miami on why the current 12-team format isn’t working out.
“I just don’t know where that line of demarcation is,” Kirby Smart said. “For Miami, who legitimately could have won the national championship, they had two losses to teams that are really competitive… But maybe they’re better than that; they shouldn’t lose those games. They had two games they shouldn’t lose. I feel like for 10 years I’ve been here, if you lost two games you shouldn’t lose, you’re gone, you’re out, but they were good enough to win it.”
We can think of it like a local village wrestling tournament. Years ago, if a wrestler lost two matches early on, they packed their bags and went home. Miami lost two matches last season. By the old rules, their championship dreams were dead. But this new, expanded system gave them a second life.
Kirby Smart’s comment exposed a crack in the old system. It didn’t matter that Miami lost to unranked Louisville and SMU because they barged in as a No. 10 seed in the 12-team format with a late-season surge and a statement win over Notre Dame. Then they made use of that opportunity by becoming the first double-digit seed to reach the national title game.
That’s why there’s this uncomfortable scenario for the playoff committee to make decisions. It’s no longer about whether a two-loss team deserves to be in. It’s about whether they can afford to leave them out. This is where the proposed 24-team model, pushed heavily by the Big Ten, starts to make sense.
I simply refuse to lose Kirby to the CFP Expansion Cult. ROBUST CONVERSATION today… pic.twitter.com/5UBWbNFanR
— Josh Pate (@JoshPateCFB) May 4, 2026
Instead of old men sitting in a room arguing over who deserves a chance, a 24-team model makes it simple math. If you win your big games, you automatically qualify. It removes the bias and guarantees that talented teams always get to prove their worth on the actual field.
Right now, playoff decisions are mostly based on opinions, which makes things unclear. Teams like Miami become examples of being inconsistent but still talented. The 24-team “23+1” model changes that. Instead of debating if a two-loss SEC or Big Ten team deserves a spot, they would already be included. That would reduce committee decisions and make the system fairer and clearer.
And there’s a safety net. In the transfer portal era, teams improve over time. Teams in September may look very different by November. A 24-team field accepts that reality, giving elite but imperfect teams room to grow into contenders instead of leaving them out early. Now, if that format comes, there are going to be more changes as the American Football Coaches Association (AFCA) recommended.
AFCA’s proposals for playoff changes
As Ross Dellenget reported for Yahoo Sports, the AFCA Board voted to support three major changes to the system.
- Expanded playoffs with maximum participation
- Elimination of conference title games
- Ending the College Football Playoff by mid-January
Considering next year’s national title game is scheduled for January 25 after campuses have reopened, it only makes sense to sacrifice some games to fit everything. So then it’s the conference championship games that’ll have to go. The reason is that if the playoff is expanded and largely automated through bids, those extra data points become risky. Anyone would ask why any top team would put themselves in a competitive extra game that could knock them out.
Not everyone’s on board, of course, starting with SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey, who’s supporting a 16-team format.
“Remember the days of old when everybody talked about, ‘We need to determine champions on the field’?” he said last week. “Well, what do we do in the SEC Championship Game? We determine champions on the field.”
Meanwhile, Kirby Smart is keeping himself open to both the 16-team and 24-team formats.
“I’d split it right down the middle. Most coaches are going to say more is better than less,” he told On3. “But I can live with either one of those two. I don’t think there’s a huge difference.”
This brings us back to Miami, a two-loss team that, in a different era, wouldn’t have even made the conversation. Now, they’re the example everyone keeps coming back to because once you’ve seen a No. 10 seed nearly win it all, it’s hard to argue the system is too big.
