Dom Amore: Expanding football playoffs will increase urgency for UConn to find a home

HARTFORD, Conn. – Decades of experience tells us at least this one absolute sports truth: From high schools to the major pro leagues, postseason play never contracts, but inexorably expands.

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Of course, it’s about money, not only the TV money that comes with expanded playoffs, but the ripple effect of giving more teams more chances to play meaningful games. Even the 64, check that, 68-team NCAA basketball field was deemed too constrictive, so now we’re going to 76.

So once college football got away – decades too late – from its archaic poll-driven championships with a single championship game in 1998, it was inevitable that two finalists would become four semifinalists, then eight, 12 and so on. Now reports indicate the FBS schools will stage a 24-team playoff beginning in 2027, more or less mirroring the FCS format which actually works rather well.

“Last year, I thought it was the most balanced and best games throughout the (12-team) playoff,” UConn AD David Benedict said. “I don’t think anyone can really predict this yet, but part of what’s happening with NIL and rev-share is talent is spreading out. So before, where there was just a handful of schools that were dominating, until you got to that final game they weren’t competitive. This past weekend, the No.1 team got upset, the No. 2 team got upset, you’re just seeing the talent is being spread out.”

The changes in player movement and compensation have helped UConn attract better players and pull its football program out of the abyss to do things few would have imagined in 2021. But playoffs? We’re talking playoffs?

If, indeed, the major conferences and TV executives hammer this out, it will put UConn in a unique position or, we should say, another unique position as the only FBS independent not named Notre Dame. The FCS model gives every conference an automatic bid. Indications are automatic bids to a 24-team FBS field would go to power four conferences, whose champions would almost certainly be at-large eligible in any event, and the highest ranking Group of Six conference champs. Since “bid-stealers” would not happen often in the power conferences, it’s plausible that all of the G-6 champs would get a spot, leaving a more than fair 18 berths for power four conferences.

In either scenario, UConn in its present situation would have to play for an at-large bid, which would appear next to impossible unless a Huskies team went 12-0 against a strong schedule. In 2025, UConn was three OT losses from being 12-0, but expanded conference schedules are already making it harder for UConn to schedule strong opponents in the future, so the pressure is on to get into a power conference the next time there is realignment, sooner than later, or settle for joining a Group of Six conference in football only. They’ve had remarkable success during these seasons cast adrift, danger is coming and they’re going to have to find a place to dock the football team.

This is why there have been rumblings connecting UConn with the Pac 12 or American Athletic Conference which, so far, have come to nothing.

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“Until we know all the details, I can’t answer with specificity,” Benedict said. “If you have to be a champion of a conference, that matters. I don’t know if conferences are going to keep playing championships, based on the weeks. Scheduling is going to be really important so that if you’re good you have a strength of schedule where you could be ranked. There’s lots of change going on with regard to scheduling, especially at the P-4 level, we’ve lost (scheduled) games, multiple games in the last couple of years, so that’s more relevant, we we sit here. When we find out what the rules of the road are for getting into the playoffs, we’ll know more about scheduling.”

The American has a more favorable TV deal than other G-6 conferences, which compelled James Madison, one of those new programs in the power block, to shift from the Sun Belt. The Protect College Sports Act, if it becomes law with some of its fourth-quarter amendments, could lead to more power conference expansion and help UConn reach its promised land.

These things, naturally, involve far more than beating UMass this week, or the landscaping around Rentschler Field. In an open letter to “UConn Nation” Monday, Benedict touted UConn’s “brand strength,” ranked No.1 by Nielsen Media and driven obviously by men’s and women’s basketball and the deep, dual March Madness runs the past four years. This can only help, but ultimately the football program needs to win, or at least avoid the embarrassing losses that give aid and comfort to detractors, and show strength in attendance, atmosphere and fundraising.

“We want to continue to move onward and upward,” coach Jason Candle said. “That’s been the goal since the day I got here, and was probably the goal before I got here. We want to take our program as high as it can possibly go. What does that look like? Define that for me? I don’t know if I have a definition for you, exactly what that looks like.”

Candle vows, as did his predecessor, Jim Mora, to concentrate on what he can control, which is the next game. The Huskies (3-3) face UMass (4-3) at Rentschler on Friday night, a must-win for UConn to have a chance to go to a bowl game for a third straight year.

Going forward, simple bowl eligibility will become the least of anyone’s worries. One of the driving forces behind the playoff expansion is traditional bowl games becoming so irrelevant, fewer and fewer good teams or players want to bother playing in them. However it plays out, the need becomes greater for UConn to rise from limbo and find a base from which it can chase one of those 24 spots.

“You see for a lot of football teams and players, if they don’t get in that top 12, they shut it down,” Benedict said. “I don’t think that’s necessarily healthy, so by expanding it, you have six more games, 12 more really good football teams that would’ve been previously been playing in a good bowl game. We’ve created this playoff, it would be like the NCAA Tournament and the NIT, most teams want to be in the NCAA. I think expanding it is the right direction. I can’t sit here today and connect dots and say it will (help UConn), and I don’t even know if they’ve 100-percent finalized how access is going to work, but what they’re saying the top 24 ranked teams are going to get in, that’s 12 more teams and we’re going to continue to try to raise the level of our football program.”

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This story was originally published October 21, 2026 at 5:47 AM.