The College Football Playoff has approved immediate changes to its format for the 12-team model ahead of the 2025 season, and in doing so created a better tournament for the fall while also setting a standard for the ongoing negotiations around 2026 and beyond.
Instead of a format where the top four seeds of a 12-team playoff were reserved for conference champions, the bracket will now mostly reflect the rankings from the College Football Playoff selection committee. The five highest-ranked conference champions still get an automatic bid into the playoff, but those coveted first-round byes awarded to the top four seeds will now go to the top four teams in the country.
Last year, those spots were awarded to Boise State and Arizona State, who while being the third and fourth highest-ranked conference champions were No. 9 and No. 12 in the final rankings, respectively. Their promotion to No. 3 and No. 4 in the bracket re-sorted the entire field and ultimately created an imbalance that hurt the competitiveness of the entire format. It’s fair to argue that one season of results is a small sample size for reaction, but last year’s 12-team tournament produced an extremely chalky set of final results, even if there were some thrilling games along the way.
Betting favorites were 10-1 in the first year of the 12-team CFP, and the only “upset” was Notre Dame beating Penn State as a 1.5-point favorite on a last-minute field goal in the Orange Bowl semifinal. By the time we got to that semifinal round, the teams involved did in fact represent the top tier of the sport (Nos. 1, 3, 4 and 6 in the final CFP rankings), but the imbalance of the first two rounds left something to be desired for many college football fans. So while college football — and college sports in general — has been undergoing massive changes that don’t always seem to keep the fans at the top of mind, these quick adjustments to the CFP are corrective in nature in that they will make it the format easier to understand and hopefully produce a better product.
College Football Playoff straight-seeding model adopted for 2025: What it means for conference champions
Brad Crawford
More competitive games in the opening rounds
Do you remember the angst coming out of the opening rounds in the first-ever 12-team College Football Playoff? The event had predictable hype that was through the roof, and when the world tuned in for the four first-round games, they got four double-digit wins by the betting favorites. Then came the quarterfinals, which featured three double-digit wins and just one close contest, even if it was an epic double-overtime thriller between Texas and Arizona State in the Peach Bowl.
No format will guarantee close games, but fixing the seeding will create more balance to the matchups in the first round, which should feed into more competitive matchups in the second round as well.
Consider that Texas and Penn State, the No. 3 and No. 4 teams in the final CFP rankings, respectively, were betting favorites of 13.5 and 7.5 points for their first-round matchups, and that in this new format they would have received byes to the quarterfinals. That would put Boise State and Arizona State — teams power rated much closer to the rest of the first-round opponents — into a pool that would at least provide matchups with a tighter spread from the oddsmakers.
🏈 2024 CFP first-round results
| Matchup | Final Score | Line | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| No. 7 Notre Dame vs. No. 10 Indiana | 27–17, Notre Dame | Notre Dame -6.5 | ||
| No. 6 Penn State vs. No. 11 SMU | 38–10, Penn State | Penn State -7.5 | ||
| No. 5 Texas vs. No. 12 Clemson | 38–24, Texas | Texas -13.5 | ||
| No. 8 Ohio State vs. No. 9 Tennessee | 42–17, Ohio State | Ohio State -7.5 |
2024 CFP quarterfinal results 🏈
| Matchup | Final Score | Line | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| No. 6 Penn State vs. No. 3 Boise State (Fiesta Bowl) | 31-14, Penn State | Penn State -11.5 | ||
| No. 5 Texas vs. No. 4 Arizona State (Peach Bowl) | 39-31 (2OT), Texas | Texas -13.5 | ||
| No. 8 Ohio State vs. No. 1 Oregon (Rose Bowl) | 41-21, Ohio State | Ohio State -2.5 | ||
| No. 7 Notre Dame vs. No. 2 Georgia (Sugar Bowl) | 23-10, Notre Dame | Notre Dame -1.5 |
The betting odds can also show us the trickle-down effect into the quarterfinals from having the seeding not match the rankings. Because Texas and Penn State each advanced out of the first round and arrived as the “underdogs” according to the seed but each were as double-digit favorites in their next game, with the Longhorns squaring off against Arizona State and the Nittany Lions taking on Boise State.
Championships should be decided on the field and not by oddsmakers or power ratings, but those numbers can help us find data to back up our intuition. The fast pass to the quarterfinals for conference champions was a noble gesture that ultimately hurt the competitiveness of the entire model. We might still get double-digit point spreads and blowouts in the first two rounds of the College Football Playoff in 2025, but at least the No. 3 and No. 4 teams in the bracket will be the No. 3 and No. 4 teams in the country.
Disadvantage for top seeds
No. 1 seed Oregon was the only undefeated team in the country, and after winning the Big Ten, its reward was facing eventual national champion Ohio State. No. 2 seed Georgia emerged from its toughest schedule in years as SEC champion and then squared off against the eventual runner-up Notre Dame in its first CFP game.
If we use the AP Top 25 poll as an objective reference here, that’s the No. 1 team facing the No. 6 team in a quarterfinal round that would usually produce a No. 8 or. No. 9 seed. Even more telling is the poor draw for Georgia, which as the No. 2 seed should face a No. 7 or No. 10 seed, but in Notre Dame it had to square off with the No. 3 team in the country, according to the AP poll. The No. 2 vs. No. 3 matchup is usually reserved for the semifinals, not the quarterfinals.
Our friends at SportsLine identified this disadvantage early last season with their CFP simulations, noting that a team might be benefited to lose their conference title game in order to gain a better path to the national championship. That the No. 5 seed, specifically, was delivering better overall results in their simulations than the path that could await the No. 1 or No. 2 seed in the old format. No college football coach is ever going to consider tanking a game for seeding reasons, especially in these early years of the CFP, but the fact that it’s even a talking point was bad for the format and bad for the sport.
2025 College Football Playoff projections: How 12-team bracket shakes out as leaders approve straight seeding
Brad Crawford
Setting the tone for 2026 and beyond
This 12-team model is only in place for 2025, then we will enter a new CFP era in 2026. Expectations are there will be more expansion, like to 14 or 16 teams, and another tweak to the format that could include automatic bids. So while we have a lot more to debate and discuss regarding how teams get bids into the playoff, what this decision has hopefully done is guarantee that competitiveness will be kept in mind when it comes to seeding the bracket. Fans can understand automatic qualifiers for conference champions, but having those teams jump the line on the seed list has proven to disrupt the bracket in ways that impact multiple rounds.
Both commissioners from the ACC and Big 12 released statements explaining their decisions to vote for a new format that could lessen the chances of their conference champion getting a bye in the 12-team CFP. They invoked motivations that included doing things for the good of the sport, which backs up the implicit or explicit side-discussions regarding the future of the playoff. Having the good of the sport in mind is something we don’t always enjoy when it comes to changes in college football, so to see leaders put selfish motives to the side in favor of a fix that helps competitiveness is an encouraging sign for the decisions that lie ahead when it comes to what CFP 3.0 looks like when they unveil the format for 2026 and beyond.
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