Paul Finebaum adamantly pushes back against proposed 24-team College Football Playoff

As the sport of college football inches closer and closer to a 24-team College Football Playoff, Paul Finebaum is raising major concerns.

ACC commissioner Jim Phillips and Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark both told On3’s Brett McMurphy on Tuesday that their leagues prefer a 24-team Playoff. This would expand the field from 12 teams to 24 teams in the near future, if it can get voted upon. Finebaum joined ESPN’s ‘Get Up’ Thursday morning and ripped apart the notion, claiming that it would ‘devalue and dilute’ the college football regular season.

“The right number is probably four, but we have 12 and we’re going to 16 or 24,” Finebaum said. “24 is the worst possibility in the history of this game. Why? Because it is going to devalue, dilute, and perhaps destroy the greatest football season of them all. That’s the regular season in college football. The big games at the end of the regular season are going to be meaningless. This is not the NFL where you try to position for a Wild Card or a home field. There just simply aren’t enough good teams.”

If the College Football Playoff was at 24 teams for the 2025 season, teams such as Arizona, Michigan, Houston, Georgia Tech, Iowa State, and North Texas would have been in the field. Finebaum is claiming that muddying the field, which was just the four best teams in college football as recently as three years ago, would completely throw off the pageantry of making the CFP.

Paul Finebaum disagrees with Jim Phillips’ reasoning for 24-team College Football Playoff

“Our desire with the coaches and the ADs is 24,” Jim Phillips told On3. “When you’re leaving national championship-contending teams out of the playoff, you don’t have the right number. We lived through it, we suffered through it with Florida State, when the field was four. I know other schools have suffered for it. Notre Dame was a CFP-worthy team last year and you saw what happened to the last team that got invited with Miami.”

Paul Finebaum, however, did not take Jim Phillips‘ quote kindly. He called the ACC Commissioner out for two-facing Notre Dame, and reiterated that the true driving force behind amending the format of the College Football Playoff are suits in television.

“I respect Jim Phillips and he’s become a very good friend, but the fact that the ACC campaigned against Notre Dame by pushing Miami is laughable. Now, he’s talking about Notre Dame being a championship-worthy team. They weren’t a championship-level team. They lost two games and they really didn’t have that much of an argument.

“The point is, television and all these other forces are driving it. This is about the Big Ten and they’re getting a lot of help, and the SEC is right to say ‘no, we don’t want that.’ And by the way, the most important thing Jim Phillips said is that ESPN doesn’t want it either. Right now, they control the CFP.”

While Phillips (ACC), Yormark (Big 12), and Tony Pettiti (Big Ten) are all in on the 24-team College Football Playoff, Greg Sankey (SEC) is pushing for a 16-team Playoff. The continued fight for further expansion of the CFP has been a hot topic of conversation since the 12-team Playoff was created, and that will not be slowing down anytime soon.