It’s out with the old and in with the 24-team playoff in college football for 2027 and beyond.

The College Football Playoff announced Monday that it is expanding its postseason format to 24 teams. The decision eliminates the need for conference championship games.

“The Big Ten Championship Game, all those conference championship games, I do think I come from a background where you were in the college football playoffs in the smaller school divisions, and I just feel like it always gives you an opportunity to unveil exactly who is the champion,” Matt Campbell said.

Campbell was the offensive coordinator at Mount Union, his alma mater, from 2005-06. While conference winners were always determined by regular-season, round-robin play, Campbell’s experience in the Ohio Athletic Conference is highly transferable to this new era of Division I football.

Ahead of the 2005 season, Division III expanded from a 28-team single-elimination playoff format to 32 programs. Mount Union emerged victorious from the bracket in both seasons during Campbell’s tenure, claiming the title of national champions.

College football has tested a lot of different methodologies over the years to figure out the best way to crown the sport’s king.

This was once done using a traditional poll-ranking system, but split titles eventually pushed conferences across the country to adopt the Bowl Championship Series (BCS), a model that used computer algorithms to determine the top teams in the country.

By 2014, the College Football Playoff was the new law of the land, and though the landscape has grown 20 teams since its inception, controversy regarding the selection process has persisted as a major issue.

“I think there’s so much more that we have to put together still in college football, you know, what does a regular season look like? How do we get the right amount of games?” Campbell said. “Do I feel like this is the right way to find the champion? Yes, a tournament is the right way to find a champion.”

Penn State President Neeli Bendapudi is the Big Ten’s representative on the College Football Playoff Board of Managers, a group of 11 university presidents and chancellors that “develops, reviews and approves annual budgets, policies and operating guidelines,” per its webpage.

Campbell and Bendapudi had conversations in the summer about the overall direction of college football, and the topic was brought up at nauseam during preseason Big Ten meetings.

The head coach didn’t explicitly describe his ideal path forward regarding changes to the college football calendar, but he made it clear he believes the sport’s future is in good hands.

“I still think there’s so much work to do on how we actually get this exactly right, but I know we got great leadership, we got great leadership in the Big Ten, and we’ve certainly got elite leadership with our president. I certainly trust the work they’re doing,” Campbell said.

Regardless of how many teams are in the playoff, Campbell’s vision for the Penn State program remains the same as when he took the job: win national championships.

Whether the 24-team playoff will serve to benefit Penn State in the long run is yet to be seen, but the Nittany Lions’ internal expectations pay no mind to that speculation.

“I don’t think those things ever change. Especially at a place like Penn State, I think your expectation is that you want to be the last man standing,” Campbell said.

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