Expansion is coming to the College Football Playoff.

Well, not officially and not right now. SEC Network host and longtime college football insider Paul Finebaum says that there will be inevitably be expansion to the four-team format that’s currently in operation. And he expects to see it sooner rather than later.

“We are definitely going to see an expansion before the end of this contract. That was clearly the subliminal message from the release Friday,” Finebaum said during Monday’s RoundTable on WJOX. “When I first saw it, I got thrown off. By putting the 16 in there, you just said, ‘No way. They’re just playing games with us.’ The closer you read it, the more you thought about it, it makes sense.

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“I think this a conversation really, not only about the College Football Playoff, but about television. They’re sending a message, ‘We are willing to have a conversation, a serious conversation before the end of this contract.’ I think because of that, they’ve opened the door. I think there’s also a feel that with so much money being spent right now on rights…I think the people who run college football have decided to take advantage of the market. The market is very good right now.”

Finebaum says that, with the market being in a good place right now, the timing is perfect for the College Football Playoff to expand and cash in on a new, lucrative television contract. He also says that the current product is getting fairly “stale.”

“Forget what [College Football Playoff executive director] Bill Hancock and everyone else says, we know the truth. It’s stale. It’s not very exciting. The number of blowouts are just over the top,” Finebaum said. “If you go back to 2014, there’s only been a handful of really good games. …The most important thing is the ratings. They have gone down every year and while that may not sound like the most important thing, they’ve gone down dramatically.”

Expansion has been a topic of conversation with the College Football Playoff essentially since its inception 2014. With Alabama, Clemson, Ohio State and Oklahoma occupying the field more times than not, the four-team format is seeing a decline in ratings.

Though there’s no official word at this time, there seems to be a lot of momentum towards an expanded field. It may just be a matter of when.