The 24-team College Football Playoff is now officially locked in. On Monday, ESPN and the College Football Playoff announced a deal to expand the field to 24 teams, with ESPN owning the rights to the new tournament.

The expanded playoff brings a long list of changes to the sport’s calendar and postseason structure. The most significant change is the elimination of conference championship games, and that decision leaves me with one important question.

What’s the point of being in a conference?

Without a title game, being in a conference has turned into little more than a scheduling agreement. That would be easier to accept if conference membership meant nothing in the new format. However, one of the key layers of the 24-team field is that byes are on the line for teams that win their conference.

I don’t understand how a team is supposed to win its conference when most of these leagues are bloated. There are too many teams, and not everyone plays each other. A conference championship game was the cleanest way to settle that debate on the field. Two teams played, and the winner was the champion.

Now, there’s no game to decide it. If there’s no conference championship game, how do we know who the best team is? Tiebreakers shouldn’t determine that, but the sport will rely on them to figure out who earns a bye. That’s a messy way to hand out one of the most valuable rewards in the bracket, and it feels like a decision that will create controversy almost immediately.

For the record, I don’t like the expanded College Football Playoff. A 24-team field waters down what makes the regular season special, and removing conference title games only adds to that problem.

The new playoff format still gets a few things right

While I’m confused by the conference decision, there are positives that come with this deal.

Most importantly, the season will start sooner, which is going to be huge for fixing the calendar. Starting before Labor Day is a step in the right direction for the sport. The regular season will still end after Thanksgiving, but moving the opening date up gives the schedule more room to breathe once the postseason arrives.

Additionally, the first two rounds will be played on home campuses. That is a massive improvement over sending teams to empty stadiums in random NFL cities. College football is at its best when the atmosphere belongs to the schools and their fan bases. Playoff games in packed college stadiums will be a much better product, and that matters for the growth of the sport.

Lastly, the Army-Navy game isn’t getting completely pushed aside. The rivalry will keep its own standalone slot, and the service academies will play the week after the final week of the regular season. Meanwhile, every team in the CFP gets that week off.

That’s the right call. The Army-Navy game is one of the sport’s most important traditions, and it deserves a spotlight that doesn’t have to compete with playoff games. Protecting that window shows the people building this format understood at least some of what makes college football unique.

The conference question isn’t going away

Despite the positives, the conference issue will hang over this format until someone fixes it. The calendar changes and campus games are smart improvements. However, a playoff that rewards conference champions with byes while removing the one game that crowns them is a contradiction.

Fans will notice it the first time a tiebreaker decides who gets a week off and who has to play an extra game. Schools will notice it too, especially if a team that never lost on the field gets bumped by a formula.

Hopefully, the people running the College Football Playoff take a hard look at how conference champions are decided before the first 24-team bracket is set, because tiebreakers shouldn’t be the reason a team’s season changes course.