Why College Football Playoff Expansion Would Help Ole Miss – Sports Illustrated

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For Ole Miss football, the early years of the College Football Playoff were defined by heartbreak. The Rebels opened at No. 4 in the very first CFP rankings in 2014, only to see injuries take their toll. A year later, they were in position to win the SEC West and reach the conference championship game, until the infamous 4th-and-25 play against Arkansas shattered those hopes.
Even after the playoff expanded in 2024, Ole Miss still ended up heartbroken after a brutal home loss to a Kentucky team that finished 1-7 in SEC play. But in 2025, Ole Miss finally had its arrival moment, breaking through to the College Football Playoff and pushing its run all the way to the final play of the Fiesta Bowl.
Playoff expansion is once again on the table.
SEC spring meetings run May 26-28 in Destin, Florida, and one of the main topics on the agenda will be expanding the College Football Playoff. League officials and coaches are expected to debate how a larger field would impact the SEC's path to the national championship and the broader landscape of the sport.
While many in the SEC support expanding the playoff from 12 to 16 teams, other leagues, including the Big Ten, are pushing for a field of at least 24. With the league now on a nine-game conference schedule, some coaches are starting to back the 24-team model as a way to compensate for the extra losses on their resume.
If a 24-team playoff had existed from the start of the CFP era, Ole Miss may already have multiple playoff appearances.
The playoff model would have been introduced at a time when Ole Miss believed it had finally rebuilt the program under Hugh Freeze, who would have led the Rebels to back-to-back appearances in 2014 and 2015.
Unfortunately, the program was hit with devastating sanctions, including bowl bans in 2017 and 2018, scholarship reductions and three years of probation. As a result, Ole Miss had no realistic path to competing nationally, but Matt Luke held the program together well enough for Lane Kiffin to still find it attractive.
The fire Kiffin brought to the athletic department led to massive investment in football, and the 2020s have yielded success for the Ole Miss program. In a 24-team playoff, Ole Miss would be coming off its fifth straight appearance and would be a serious threat to make a deep run in 2026.
Given the instability of modern rosters and the addition of extra conference games, expanded playoff access clearly benefits Ole Miss. In 2024, three losses left the Rebels just on the outside looking in, but under a 24-team model, that team would have comfortably qualified for the postseason.
One extra loss would no longer kill a season, and because Ole Miss leans so heavily on the portal, an expanded playoff leaves a little extra room for error when evaluating talent. But Ole Miss seems to have found a formula for rebuilding its roster on a yearly, consistent basis and, since 2020, has climbed to the third-winningest program in the SEC, behind Georgia and Alabama.
Does expansion actually help? Ole Miss has spent the better part of fifteen years catching up to the top of the league, and while it's still not a lock for the College Football Playoff every year, it is finding itself with more opportunities on an annual basis.
Expansion narrows the hard-earned gap Ole Miss created to separate itself from the SEC's middle tier. More games and more teams may bring additional revenue and easier access, but shrink the very gap that helped make the program more appealing on the recruiting trail.
Based on recent trends, the Rebels would be a perennial power with multiple playoff appearances in an expanded model. That might not guarantee championships for Ole Miss, but it could permanently elevate the program's national standing.
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Benji Haire is a sports writer covering the SEC and Ole Miss. Based in Mississippi, Haire provides an on-the-ground perspective around Ole Miss, blending daily coverage with deeper analysis of the issues shaping the program and conference. Away from the keyboard, he spends time on the golf course or camping with his family.
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