A day of change in college football, as Fran Brown is focused on the next game at N.C. State

The College Football Playoffs will expand to 24 teams in 2027, eliminating conference title games, as Brown is busy gunning for win five on the path to '26 bowl eligibility.

Syracuse coach Fran Brown addresses the media Monday at Lally Athletics Complex. The Orange face N.C. State Saturday on the road, needing two wins in their final three games for bowl eligibility. | Screen shot courtesy of Syracuse University Athletic Communications

It's official for next season with the College Football Playoff expanding to a 24 team field. The CFP Monday reached agreement with broadcast partner ESPN on a five year, $1.5B contract that will kick in beginning next season, eliminating the over two decades-old P4 conference championship games that have been played the first Saturday of December. That change also ends a long association between the ACC and its partners in Charlotte business and government, the game's longtime home.

Instead, next season will commence with "Week Zero" the week before Labor Day, when Syracuse plays its first international game since 1989 in Toronto on August 28 or 29, 2027 against Wake Forest. The ACC regular season will end on Thanksgiving Weekend moving forward, with the playoff teams getting one week off before the CFP's first-round kicks-off the second weekend of December.

A glimpse of what the trajectory of the Orange program looks like

With the ACC conference championship game no more after this season, the Orange will have failed to qualify for the game in their first 14 seasons as a league member, and the eventual goal of making the sport's postseason playoff which has expanded from four, to the present 12, and next year's 24 team field.

Conference champions will receive an automatic bid to the CFP, and the ACC was ambiguous in its statement Monday on exactly how that automatic qualifier will be determined moving forward. The best bet is the current tiebreaking procedures will be tweaked starting next season.

(Do not forget, some teams play nine regular season games in the ACC and some teams play eight games, which has to be accounted for in the tiebreakers. Syracuse is set to play eight league games in the regular season in 2030.)

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Brown was not asked about the CFP expansion at his Monday media availability., and no matter.

The SU coach is well known for only focusing on the day at hand during a game week, but did offer his vision of the program's trajectory as he remained focused on getting closer to bowl eligibility this season by defeating the wounded Wolfpack (about to name former star QB Phillip Rivers as the program's next coach).

"We've got to keep growing (as a program)," was the point Brown emphasized Monday as the Orange remain a distance away competitively from a future 24 team CFP bracket.

"Keep pushing to get ourselves bowl eligible," he added. "To go from bowl eligible to growing and keep working, making sure the trajectory of our program is consistently going up. That's what's important to me."

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