Big Picture: Sonny Dykes Endorses 24-Team FCS Model as CFP Expansion Debate Grows

Before I wrapped up a recent phone conversation with TCU head coach Sonny Dykes, we visited the one of many topics reshaping the sport: Which College Football Playoff format does he actually prefer? Twelve teams? Sixteen? The Big Ten’s floated 24-team model? What I got is one of the rarest commodities in sports journalism: a straight answer. “I like the FCS model,” Dykes told me, referring to the Football Championship Subdivision, the NCAA’s second tier of Division I football. “Why in the world are we having conference championship games if they tell us conference championship games don’t matter? Why in the world would we have a game in December that doesn’t matter?” No hedging. No coach-speak. Just a head coach publicly questioning the logic of the sport’s postseason structure. And it’s a structure that’s already gaining momentum. When Dykes led TCU to the national title game in the 2022 season, 131 teams competed at the FBS level. This fall, there will be 138. The number of teams playing FBS football keeps expanding — and so does the pressure to expand the College Football Playoff, again, barely a decade after its 2014 debut. The question is no longer whether the field will grow. It’s how big it will get, and who gets to decide? Neither the Big Ten nor the SEC — the two conferences with the most voting power to extend the field — is opposed to expansion. They just don’t agree on how many teams should be included or the formula for entry. And recent history shows why that disagreement matters. Three years ago, Dykes led TCU to the four-team CFP, despite a loss in the Big 12 championship game. A year later, Florida State went 13–0, won the ACC title and was, controversially, left out of the four-team field entirely. [LET’S DEBATE: What to Keep and Change in the CFP Format] By 2025, the disconnect had only widened: ACC champion Duke did not receive an invitation to the CFP, while Oklahoma, Texas A&M, Miami, Oregon and Ole Miss received invitations without even qualifying for their respective conference title games. If that’s going to be the case in the future — and as long as Notre Dame plays football as an independent — Dykes has a solution for what the next evolution of scheduling in the sport should be. “Let’s get rid of those [conference championship] games,” he told me. “Let’s start the season a week earlier. Let’s play straight through [without bye weeks], finish in the first week of January and be done.” And that is essentially how the FCS playoff model functions. And that advantage matters. Sixteen of the last 18 FCS national championship game participants advanced by playing at home through the semifinals. And over the past decade, the top-2 seeds have filled 16 of the 20 spots in the title game. “The FCS has proven for a long time that it has a very easy model, a very sustainable model,” Dykes said. “The fact that we can’t get the two conferences that are calling the shots to agree on it is just crazy.” To him, the logic is obvious. “Why in the world would we not adopt it?” Dykes questioned. “It’s worked for a long time, and it’s like these guys want to invent the wheel, and the wheel’s been spinning for 20 years.” In the current FBS playoff model, the programs most likely to secure the top-four seeds in the CFP are also likely to be the sport’s best-funded and deepest. For teams outside the Power 4, that makes playing for a national title — or even earning an invitation to the CFP — seem almost unrealistic. “The problem is, there are now 138 teams playing Division I football,” Dykes told me. “How many of those teams really have a chance to win it? Maybe 15? That’s less than 10 percent. I mean, that’s not good. That would be like only three teams in the NFL having a shot. That’s not good for college football. “So we either need to split it up and divide it amongst the teams that are really committed to playing at the highest level, or we need to figure out a way to make it more accessible to those other teams.” The teams Dykes worries about most are those playing Group of 6 football, programs recently elevated from the FCS to FBS or schools like the one he once coached at: Louisiana Tech. In 2012, he led the Bulldogs to a No. 19 ranking in the BCS poll.”We had a really good team, but we did not have a chance to win a national championship,” Dykes told me. “It’s hard for those teams that don’t have the financial commitment. It was hard then, and it’s even much harder now in the pay-for-play era that we have.” The price of playing big-time college football has never been higher, and yet we’ve never seen more schools try to use it as a vehicle to elevate their national visibility. [CFP: Joel Klatt’s CFP Model To Help End (Most) Debates] Will the CFP field extend to 24 teams in the near future? That’s hard to say. But with most network television contracts set to expire over the next decade and the CFP reaching the conclusion of its deal, leagues will realign again. New deals will be struck between leagues and TV rights holders. College football fans will inevitably look up one day and find that the sport has changed drastically once again. And if the most prominent stakeholders don’t act soon, will that drastic change be for the better of the sport? Dykes is aware of all of this. He simply hopes the leaders of the sport do something about it sooner rather than later, before he feels like he’s lost the game he’s dedicated his life to coaching. In the Big Picture, we contextualize key moves and moments so you can instantly understand why they matter.