College Football Playoff’s new seeding rules: Who will benefit most?
College Football’s 12-team playoff will have a different look in its second year. CFP executives announced Thursday, May 22, that they will move to a straight seeding model when the tournament kicks off in December 2025.
Why did the commissioners change the seeding format?
In a unanimous vote, the 10 FBS commissioners and Notre Dame Athletic Director Pete Bevacqua decided to seed teams based on the selection committee’s final rankings instead of using conference champions as the top seeds.
In the 2024 season, the top four seeds went to the highest-ranked conference champions, and all of those teams earned first-round byes. Arizona State, Oregon, Boise State and Georgia all lost their first games after having a bye week leading into the playoff quarterfinals.
Under the new format, the top four teams in the CFP poll will earn the top four seeds and get the first-round byes. Notre Dame will now have a chance at a top-four seed, whereas last year, because they are not affiliated with a conference, they were not eligible.
Will conference champions still make the field?
Unbiased. Straight Facts.TM
Under the College Football Playoff’s new seeding format, the poll’s No. 3 Texas and No. 4 Penn State would have received first-round byes instead of No. 9 Boise State and No. 12 Arizona State in the 2024 tournament.
If a team is not ranked in the top 12 but is still one of the five highest-ranked conference champions, they’ll still be guaranteed a spot in the field, as was the case last year when ACC champion-Clemson was ranked 16th but seeded 12th.
“After evaluating the first year of the 12-team Playoff, the CFP management committee felt it was in the best interest of the game to make this adjustment,” CFP Executive Director Rich Clark said. “This change will continue to allow guaranteed access to the Playoff by rewarding teams for winning their conference championship, but it will also allow us to construct a postseason bracket that recognizes the best performance on the field during the entire regular season.”
The committee debated the change for months after the inaugural bracket drew criticism from fans, media members and some coaches. The biggest perceived discrepancies involved ninth-ranked Boise State, the Mountain West champion, earning the third seed, and 12th-ranked Arizona State, the Big 12 champion, being seeded fourth.
Are there bigger changes coming to the playoff?
Now that the committee has seemingly solved one issue, there’s a bigger change on the horizon, one that could render the new seeding model obsolete after just one season.
Officials from the SEC and the Big Ten, the two largest and most powerful conferences, are pushing for expansion to a 16-team format for the 2026 season. Their proposal would feature four automatic qualifiers for the four major conferences, the SEC, Big Ten, Big 12 and ACC. That format would leave four additional at-large bids to the tournament.
It’s one of several expansion ideas being floated. A 16-team tournament would also require a change to the playoff schedule. Games would start as early as the second weekend in December.
Expansion will also affect how much money each conference and team earns for being a part of the playoff. That’s just one of several sticking points, most notably for those conferences who feel they’d be on the outside looking in, Clark said in an interview with ESPN.
“There’s still lots of discussion,” Clark said. “The commissioners are really putting everything on the table so that everybody knows where each other is coming from, but they’re still in discussions.”
Ella Rae Greene, Editor In Chief
