NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WSMV) – The college football regular season has come to a dramatic close and all the talk is centered around the first edition of the first 12-team College Football Playoff bracket.
While the first four games will be hosted by the higher-seeded teams, including Tennessee traveling to Ohio State for a Dec. 21 matchup, the quarterfinal games and beyond will be played on neutral sites. The venues at hand traditionally hosted postseason college football bowl games, but now, with the expanded CFP they’ll host games with far more on the line.
As the 12-team CFP format enters its first go-around, it may not last long, as the postseason could expand further to a 14-team playoff in the 2026 season with rumors of a new television agreement on the horizon.
With the talk of more meaningful football comes the continued push for large sports events to come to Music City. The success Nashville saw with the NFL Draft in 2019 along with the construction of the new Nissan Stadium has brought a renewed push for Nashville to play host.
The Nashville Sports Council shared that one of its goals, along with hosting a Super Bowl, is to become a part of the future of the CFP.
“We certainly would love to step up and have a bigger role in the postseason, but what that is is a little undefined right now,” Scott Ramsey, Music City Bowl president said. “I think there are a lot of things these first couple years here of the 12-team to kind of work through. Is it going to stay at 12, go to 14, go to 16 and expand? Are they going to stay on campus or are they going to move to neutral sites, which would open up opportunities for us? We’re getting prepared, but at the same time, we’re going to have to be very reactive to decisions being made in the next 12 months or so about what the postseason wants to look like.”
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