On Monday morning, it was officially revealed that the college football playoff would be expanding to 24 teams next season, eliminating the four major conference championship games in the process. The move will come after just three years of the 12-team playoff format, which some fans felt already allowed too many teams into the big dance.

Now, college football playoff executive director Rich Clark has attempted to ease some fans' concerns amid the announcement.

“We’re aware of the fan sentiment, and that many fans aren’t in favor of expansion. That was certainly weighed into the decision and it was considered. But ultimately, we just need to make a spectacular Playoff,” he said, per Amanda Christovich of Front Office Sports on X, formerly Twitter.

“We appreciate our fans. We did take into account their sentiment. And that was rolled into this decision. But we decided to move forward with it,” he added.

While the new playoff format will obviously now include more playoff games than ever before, and thus more ad revenue for the networks covering them, fans have complained that allowing so many teams into the big dance will cheapen the regular season, which was long viewed as one of the key reasons why college football was so entertaining to begin with.

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Many fans have also noted that in any given year, there are rarely more than three to four teams with a realistic chance of winning it all, so raising the number of teams that get into to several times that number seems counterintuitive to many.

However, clearly, those concerns were not enough for Clark and company to change their decision.