The College Football Playoff’s jump from 12 teams to 24 changes the road for Pitt in a very specific way: it makes the Panthers’ postseason path easier to enter, but much harder to finish.
Starting next season, the expanded format will wipe out conference championship games for the Power Four, while handing out 19 at-large bids, four spots to conference champions and one berth to the group-of-six champion. For Pitt, that means a team that has not made the 12-team field in the playoff’s first three years now has a more realistic shot at getting in.
That alone matters. Pitt has not finished a season ranked since it was No. 17 in 2022, though the Panthers have been in the top 25 as recently as this season.
Under the new setup, they do not have to be one of the very best teams in the country just to sneak into the bracket. A playoff game also brings a more compelling postseason than the usual bowl assignment.
It also gives the program a clearer measuring stick. Pitt has kept Pat Narduzzi as head coach for more than a decade, and while he has his supporters and detractors, this new format creates a straightforward standard for judging the program. For a team like Pitt, missing an expanded playoff would be hard to justify.
But the bracket only solves part of the problem.
The Panthers’ bigger issue is what comes after they get in. Pitt has been routinely overwhelmed by the sport’s elite programs, and the gap showed again this season when No.
1 Miami put 52 points on the Panthers. That was not an isolated case, either; Pitt was not much better against Miami or Notre Dame last season.
The best-ranked opponent Pitt has beaten over the last three years was No. 16 Georgia Tech, a strong road win, but not the kind of result that suggests a national title run is around the corner. To win a championship, Pitt would almost certainly have to get through teams like Notre Dame, Ohio State, Indiana or Georgia.
That is where the old ACC Championship had value. It was a reachable big-game target, and the 2021 ACC Championship stands as the most decorated win in recent Pitt history. It sat in a sweet spot between a regular bowl win and the kind of mountain climb required to win a national title.
The reality is that Pitt would need significantly more donor support to build a roster capable of winning it all. The program simply has not drawn the kind of major backing some of the sport’s heavyweights enjoy. So while the expanded playoff gives Pitt a better chance to get a seat at the table, the likely payoff is still limited: one or two playoff wins before running into a far better team.
Narduzzi has already made his view clear. He has said he is not a fan of eliminating conference championship games, but he does not mind 24 teams getting in.