In this summer's expanded FIFA World Cup, the entire world got a taste of peak March Madness. And it loved what it saw. Lower seeds -- in this case, small or unproven countries like Cape Verde and Congo DR -- defined the early part of the tournament, pulling upsets (it's soccer, so draws count as upsets) and giving us a bracket we didn't quite expect. The heavyweights eventually took over, but despite the fact that this was the biggest and longest World Cup ever, the underdogs gave the tournament almost endless momentum. Something breathless was almost always happening. It was great.
Of course, being the biggest World Cup -- 48 teams in all, up from 32 in 2022 -- had its advantages: We had more underdogs, and therefore more had opportunities to make noise. Not all of them did, but there were few mega-blowouts. The underdogs came to play, as I was confident they would. And getting to watch the celebrations when Cape Verde qualified for the knockout rounds (where they would damn near beat Argentina) was one of the cooler sports moments of the decade.
Despite naysaying from a number of fans and journalists, and despite extremely apt judgments regarding why FIFA wanted to expand the World Cup -- an even larger money cannon, plus the votes president Gianni Infantino needs to remain in office -- I was extremely confident that expansion would pay off precisely because of the March Madness angle. Pure law of averages suggested we would get upsets and chaos in the early going. And the floor for soccer has risen enough that if you're, say, the 44th-best team in the world, the gap between you and the top teams isn't as vast as it once was. Congo DR, for instance, has half its roster (13 of 26 players) playing in major leagues in England, Spain or France.
The underdog buzz from the early weeks of this tournament was so strong that, when I would put on my college football hat and do a radio bit the moment after a huge result, I would inevitably get asked the same question: If the expanded World Cup is this awesome, what does that say about the expanded College Football Playoff that is being proposed?
"Nothing," was my answer. Because what's being proposed in the world of CFP expansion has nothing to do with how the World Cup expanded.
I loved World Cup expansion, and I hate the proposed CFP expansion
Adding a fifth round to the tournament when we can't even finish a four-round tournament before the end of January seems a bit foolish. After a couple of more preposterously late title games, it appears we'll be moving the title game back to a more acceptable range, but will that remain the case with an extra round? Plus, one of the major solutions for shrinking the calendar -- ditching the conference title games that define the season for a number of conferences -- seems extremely short-sighted. (Flex-week championship weeks could be incredible, but that idea hasn't taken hold just yet. Give me time.) Plus, all of the integrity-of-the-regular-season concerns that people expressed when first the four-team and then 12-team playoffs were proposed would be a legitimate issue this time around if we're openly letting in a majority of 8-4 teams from the Big Ten and SEC. With 12 teams, we've found a nice balance between the drama of playoff pushes and the stinginess of the mulligans we hand out, and we shouldn't take that for granted.
Those concerns are somewhat negotiable, however. The calendar could be adjusted without mitigating the fun of conference title races, and the playoff could be expanded in ways that don't result in Ohio State never again playing in a meaningful regular-season game.
What I hate most about the 24-team playoff currently being proposed is access: There's almost none of it.
Big Ten commissioner Tony Pettiti is proposing a structure that would guarantee that the top 23 teams get into the field, with only one spot reserved for a team from a Group of 6 conference (American, Conference USA, MAC, Mountain West, Pac-12, Sun Belt). Based on the final CFP rankings of 2024, that would have resulted in 22 so-called power programs getting in: seven SEC teams, six Big Ten teams, five Big 12 teams, three ACC teams, plus Notre Dame. Two G6 teams finished the 2025 regular season ranked in the top 24 -- No. 20 Tulane and No. 24 James Madison -- but with the disdain the playoff committee has shown to mid-majors through the years, I would say there's a good chance that JMU would have ranked 25th had there been a playoff spot on the line there. Either 8-5 ACC champion Duke or an 8-4 SEC team like Missouri or Tennessee could very well have been 24th instead of 12-1 JMU.
Meanwhile, when the World Cup expanded, the vast majority of the new spots went to less-represented federations.
Europe and South America have produced every World Cup champion to date, but they received only five of the 16 new tournament bids. The other four confederations -- the "mid-majors" of the soccer universe -- went from 15 combined bids to 26. Africa doubled its representation and then sent nine of its 10 teams to the knockout rounds. For the first time, Oceania had a guaranteed spot in the World Cup with New Zealand reaching the World Cup for just the third time.
Now, this being FIFA, there was a pretty cynical reason behind this increased representation. Every FIFA member country has an equal vote, and the last three FIFA presidents -- Joao Havelange, Sepp Blatter and Gianni Infantino -- have all come to realize that the best way to vacuum up the many votes from Africa, Asia and Central America in particular is to promise expanded access to the World Cup (and increased money from that expanded World Cup). Infantino can talk a big game about bringing soccer to the world, but he has benefited from the tournament's expansion more than anyone. You don't have to give him credit for this World Cup's success simply because he and his organization own an amazing game. But at least international soccer's incentive structure produces access; in college football, it's increasingly producing the opposite.
It's all about representation
If Pettiti had been in charge of World Cup expansion, there probably would have been about 36 European teams in the 48-team field. That's where the "best" teams come from, after all. In the current FIFA rankings, there are as many top-40 European teams who didn't make the field -- seven: No. 15 Italy, No. 21 Denmark, No. 33 Ukraine, No. 36 Poland, No. 38 Wales, No. 39 Hungary and No. 40 Serbia -- as there are top-40 teams from Asia (four) and North America (three) combined. And yet, Italy watched from home because they didn't win enough, while Panama and Uzbekistan got bids because they did. You might say they settled it on the pitch.
This is a world tournament, however. Just as the Big Ten and SEC already have Big Ten and SEC conference play -- and the money that comes from participating in that -- Europe already has the Euros, the second-biggest international tournament in the world. That shouldn't entitle it to majority access in the World Cup as well. As Netherlands head coach Ronald Koeman said before one of the World Cup matches I covered, "If other countries aren't here, they failed to qualify, and that's their problem. I don't see teams in this tournament that don't belong here."
As a longtime fan of small-school playoffs, I've never been afraid of the idea of a huge CFP. Granted, the calendar indeed still needs to be straightened out before adding a fifth round, but a 24-team CFP that invites every conference champion -- and keeps conference title games in place, albeit perhaps while preventing anyone from playing a 13th regular-season game -- would immediately have my support. Because as anyone who celebrated the amazing Elite Eight run of St. Peter's in men's basketball a few years ago or watched Cape Verde push reigning world champion Argentina to the limit can attest, access is an amazing thing. It will produce a few blowouts (Germany did beat Curacao 7-1), and it will produce utterly indelible moments. That's a fair trade.
Here's a little secret: The lowest-ranked teams in a 24-team college football tournament probably aren't going to win, no matter who they are. Who we invite is all about aesthetics.
If Pettiti's proposal had been in place for 2025, here are the additional teams that would have gotten in, based on the final CFP rankings: Notre Dame, BYU, Texas, Vanderbilt, Utah, USC, Arizona, Michigan, Virginia, Houston, Georgia Tech and Iowa. Per SP+, the last four teams in -- Virginia, Houston, Georgia Tech and Iowa -- would have had a combined 0.8% chance of winning the national title.
If we had let in all conference champions instead, replace those last four teams with Duke, Boise State, Western Michigan and Kennesaw State. They would have had a 0.01% title chance. That's definitely a smaller number, but either way the other 20 teams in the field would have been above 99%. This all basically matches up with the World Cup: Before the tournament began, the six teams that had grabbed the last qualification spots via last-ditch playoffs in the spring (Iraq, Congo DR, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Türkiye, Sweden and Czech Republic) had a combined 2% title chance, per Opta.
Hypothetical 2025 CFP with all conference champions
First round
17 Arizona at 16 USC
24 Kennesaw State at 9 Alabama
21 Duke at 12 BYU
20 JMU at 13 Texas
22 Boise State at 11 Notre Dame
19 Tulane at 14 Vanderbilt
23 Western Michigan at 10 Miami
18 Michigan at 15 Utah
Second round
USC/Arizona at 1 Indiana
Alabama/KSU at 8 Oklahoma
BYU/Duke at 5 Oregon
Texas/JMU at 4 Texas Tech
Notre Dame/Boise State at 11 Ole Miss
Vandy/Tulane at 3 Georgia
Miami/WMU at 7 Texas A&M
Utah/Michigan at 2 Ohio State
Who would have been more excited about making the dance: the field's Italy (Michigan) or the field's Cape Verde (Kennesaw State)? And what outcome would have resonated more in the long term: Michigan reaching the quarterfinals or Kennesaw State upsetting Alabama in the first round? Per SP+, the odds of the latter would have actually been slightly greater than the former.
Even in this era of expanding inequality and faltering manifest destiny, there would still be major upsets over a series of years. In fact, even though the best mid-major teams aren't as good as they used to be, of the five mid-majors in this hypothetical 2025 field there's about a 50% chance (again per SP+) that one of them would have won a first-round game.
Even with automatic qualification for all conference champions, which would result in fewer overall at-large bids, expanding to 24 teams would still have an impact on the regular season. It wasn't my intent to pick on Michigan here, but the Wolverines never once looked like a playoff team last year and would have still gotten into a 24-team field after getting rocked by Ohio State in the final week of the regular season. Arizona and Vanderbilt would have gotten in despite each having 0-2 records against teams that finished better than 8-4.
You could still earn a shot at the national title without either winning your conference or scoring any particularly impressive wins. But if the trade-off for that is that we have 10 different meaningful conference title races to follow and we get occasional Cinderella storylines -- and we would, no matter how hard we've tried to tilt the playing field in the direction of the powers -- that's pretty exciting. The World Cup didn't prove that an expanded CFP would be amazing, too. But it might be if we actually tried to expand the right way.
