The Hidden Mileage in Ohio State's 20-Team Playoff Push
You can learn a lot about a football team by looking at the training room in December. It’s not the loud energy of August camp anymore. It’s the smell of icy hot, the hum of stimulation machines, and a line of guys waiting to get ankles retaped just to get through a walk-through. By Week 15, nobody is healthy; they are just functional.
That creates a specific kind of tension when you hear the brass talking about adding more games to the slate.
According to reports out of Columbus this week, Ohio State head coach Ryan Day and athletic director Ross Bjork are throwing their weight behind further expansion of the College Football Playoff. The field just moved to 12, but the conversation is already shifting toward 16, 20, or even 24 teams. Day went on record saying he’d “go all the way to 20,” arguing it keeps more teams involved and stops the wave of bowl game opt-outs.
From the athletic director's suite, this makes perfect sense. Bjork used the word “content” to describe the value of more playoff games. More inventory means more TV slots, which keeps the revenue flowing and the lights on.
But from the coaches' locker room, looking at a 20-team bracket feels like staring at a mountain range that never ends. We aren't just talking about adding names to a bracket; we are talking about asking 21-year-olds to play an NFL schedule without an NFL offseason.
The Depth Chart Math
Ryan Day says a larger field is “good for everybody.” Logistically, that statement depends entirely on your depth chart. If you’re playing 16 or 17 games to win a title, your second string isn't a luxury anymore; it’s a necessity. You can’t survive a four-round playoff with five good offensive linemen.
That’s where Ohio State is actually positioning itself well, perhaps unintentionally. The Buckeyes are returning four starting offensive linemen for the 2026 season. They aren’t relying on the portal to plug massive holes; they are leaning on retention. In a 20-team world, retention is the only way to keep the machine running. You need bodies that have been in the weight room for three years, not three months.
Bjork argues that expansion creates more meaningful games in November. He’s right on the math—more teams stay alive longer. But the trade-off is the grind. Every week you extend the season, you compress the recovery time. The turnaround from a Big Ten Championship game to a first-round playoff game is already a logistical nightmare involving travel manifests, hotel blocks, and game-planning on short sleep.
The Opt-Out Variable
Day’s point about opt-outs is the most pragmatic part of the pitch. You see fewer guys skipping games if a ring is technically still on the table. But there is a point of diminishing returns. If you expand to 24 teams, you are going to have 9-3 teams traveling across the country to get battered by a top seed. The wear and tear on the roster for a “participation” playoff game is a hard sell to a kid with a draft grade, regardless of what the bracket says.
Ohio State is looking at this through the lens of a program that expects to be there every year. They have the resources to handle the travel and the support staff to manage the recovery. But for the rest of the league, keeping up with a 20-team mandate requires an infrastructure overhaul.
We are moving toward a model where the season is a war of attrition, not just execution. The teams that lift the trophy in a 20-team format won’t just be the most talented; they’ll be the ones with enough tape left to hold the roster together.