Playoff Expands to 24 Teams, and the SEC Championship Game Ends After 35 Years

Atlanta The College Football Playoff will double to 24 teams next season, and the price of that bigger bracket is the SEC Championship Game. The conference announced Monday that the Dec. 5 game at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta will be the 35th and final edition.

The SEC title game is not the only one going away. The Big Ten, ACC and Big 12 championship games are also being dropped as the playoff expands from 12 teams, the format it moved to in 2024, to 24, the Associated Press reported.

How the 24-team playoff works

The new field has five automatic qualifiers: the champions of the four Power Four conferences and the highest-ranked team from the Group of Six. A selection panel picks the other 19 teams, according to the AP.

The top eight seeds get first-round byes. The playoff begins the second weekend in December, and the first two rounds will be played on campus, with traditional bowl games still hosting the quarterfinals and semifinals, the AP reported. DawgNation, citing ESPN's Heather Dinich, reported that Selection Sunday for the 2027 season will be Nov. 28, 2027, and that the season will now start the week before Labor Day, the weekend long known as Week Zero.

Notre Dame loses something in the deal. Under this year's format the Irish earn a guaranteed spot by finishing in the top 12. Under the new format they have no guaranteed spot, according to the AP.

The money and the schedule

ESPN agreed to rework its contract to carry the 11 additional games. The network said the change runs five years and adds $1.7 billion on top of its existing $7.8 billion deal, which runs through the 2031 season, the AP reported. ESPN also said it would not owe about $140 million of that new money because the conference title games it televises are being canceled.

There is a scheduling string attached. Power Four teams will have to play at least 10 qualifying regular-season games against conference opponents, other Power Four teams and Notre Dame, according to the AP. The Army-Navy game moves into the first weekend of December, the slot the conference title games are leaving.

Mississippi State president Mark Keenum, who chairs the CFP board, said in the AP's report that the board looks forward to "seeing this expanded format come to life next season."

The end of an SEC tradition

The SEC invented the modern conference title game. Former commissioner Roy Kramer conceived it, and the first one was played Dec. 5, 1992, at Legion Field in Birmingham, where Alabama beat Florida 28-21 on its way to the national title, Patch reported. The game moved to Atlanta in 1994, spent 23 straight years in the Georgia Dome and moved to Mercedes-Benz Stadium in 2017.

Over its first 34 editions, 14 SEC teams that played in it went on to win national championships, according to Patch. Commissioner Greg Sankey called it "a defining event in college football for more than three decades."

Atlanta is not leaving the postseason picture. Peach Bowl president and CEO David Epps told WTVM the bowl's focus now is hosting strong quarterfinal and semifinal games and keeping the city part of the national championship chase.

Tennessee and the last one

Tennessee owns a piece of the game's history. The Vols played in five SEC Championship Games and went 2-3, beating Auburn 30-29 in 1997 and Mississippi State 24-14 in 1998 on the way to the 1998 national title, then losing to LSU in 2001 and 2007 and Auburn in 2004, according to the SEC's championship game record book. Tennessee has not been back since 2007.

This year's race is still open. Georgia leads the league at 6-1. Kentucky and Alabama are 5-2, and Tennessee is 4-2 with three conference games left, at Texas A&M on Saturday, home against LSU on Nov. 21 and at Vanderbilt on Nov. 28. The Vols have already beaten both Alabama and Kentucky.

The final SEC Championship Game is Saturday, Dec. 5, in Atlanta. Every team still in the hunt now has one more reason to want to be in the building.

Sources: Associated Press via 41NBC, College Football Playoff expansion will eliminate SEC championship game; Patch, SEC to end championship game after 35 years as College Football Playoff expands; WTVM, Atlanta's SEC championship tradition ends with 24-team playoff expansion; DawgNation, College Football Playoff to expand to 24 teams in 2027, SEC championship game to be eliminated; SEC Championship Game Record Book (2017)