OHIO — College football's postseason could be getting considerably bigger, and the changes might extend well beyond simply adding more teams to the national championship race.

The College Football Playoff is reportedly nearing an agreement to expand from 12 to 24 teams beginning with the 2027 season. Although final approval is still required, negotiations have advanced far enough that eliminating conference championship games is now a serious possibility.

Under the proposed format, the playoff would include 19 at-large selections, automatic bids for the champions of the Big Ten, SEC, ACC, and Big 12, and one guaranteed spot for the highest-ranked champion from the remaining six Football Bowl Subdivision conferences.

The structure would create significantly more opportunities for programs that might otherwise fall outside the current 12-team field. It would also dramatically change the postseason schedule, adding another round of games and potentially extending the national championship race.

The eight highest-seeded teams would reportedly receive first-round byes, while teams seeded ninth through 16th would host opening-round games against seeds 17 through 24. The winners would advance to face the top eight seeds on their home fields before the quarterfinals and semifinals move to traditional bowl sites.

For Ohio State, the expanded field would provide considerably more room for error during the regular season. A loss to a highly ranked opponent, particularly in a conference as competitive as the Big Ten, would be less likely to jeopardize the Buckeyes' postseason opportunities.

The change could also benefit programs such as Cincinnati, which would have a more realistic path to the playoff without necessarily needing to win the Big 12 championship. With 19 at-large bids available, strong regular-season performances would carry greater potential rewards for teams outside the traditional national championship contenders.

Perhaps the most controversial element of the proposal involves the future of conference championship games.

Eliminating those games would open space on the calendar for the expanded playoff, but it would also remove a major source of revenue for conferences and their television partners. The Big Ten Championship Game, traditionally played in Indianapolis, has become one of the conference's signature events.

Ohio State has appeared in seven Big Ten Championship Games since the conference introduced the event in 2011, winning five. Most recently, the Buckeyes lost to Indiana, 13-10, in last season's championship game before the Hoosiers went on to claim the national title.

Replacing the revenue generated by those games has been a central issue in negotiations. The expanded playoff could require hundreds of millions of dollars in additional television payments, with ESPN and conference officials working to determine whether an agreement is financially feasible.

Eliminating conference championship games would also raise questions about how automatic qualifiers are selected. Under the proposed structure, each of the Power Four conferences would still receive a guaranteed bid for its champion, leaving individual conferences to establish how those champions would be determined.

The College Football Playoff acknowledged Thursday that negotiations with ESPN were continuing but stopped short of announcing a finalized agreement.

The two sides have been discussing additional media rights beyond ESPN's existing six-year, $7.8 billion agreement, which runs through the 2031-32 season. ESPN currently holds exclusive negotiating rights for the additional games, although other broadcasters could eventually become involved if an agreement cannot be reached.

The Big Ten and SEC have been particularly influential in determining the direction of expansion. While the conferences initially favored different playoff sizes, discussions have increasingly centered on the 24-team model.

There are still important questions to resolve, including how conference champions would be determined, how revenue would be distributed, and whether regular-season scheduling requirements would change.

The 2026 season will continue under the current 12-team structure, with December 1 serving as the deadline for finalizing changes to the 2027 playoff format.

For a sport that spent its first decade of the playoff era selecting only four teams, the proposed expansion represents another enormous change in a relatively short period. Ohio State won the inaugural four-team playoff following the 2014 season and captured the first championship under the 12-team format a decade later.

Now, college football appears increasingly close to adopting a postseason twice as large as the one introduced just two years ago.

Whether that creates a better system for determining a national champion remains to be seen, but the consequences for conference championships, regular-season scheduling, and the importance of individual games could be substantial.